A/N: There's one more chapter. One more short chapter that will come out soon, without an author's note to accompany it. Enjoy the scare (and fluffy) words left. :)

Part 7: The Circles

At five thirty AM on the dot, most of Kohona begin their daily lifes. Of course, the majority of Kohona is civilians, so the number wasn't nearly true enough for shinobi. Wake up is at three AM, breakfast is at three fifteen, missions are handed out at four- or at least they are for the Chunin and all ranks above-, and you are expected to have booted it out to wherever by the time to civilians are out and about.

So when Naruto doesn't wake her up at the usual time, Hinata is naturally suspicious. She rolls over and pokes his side, only to find that he's wide awake and staring at her.

"You idiot," Hinata grumbles as she pushes him over the edge. He yanks the covers, pulling her to him and the floor in a cloth burrito. She shrieks as they collapse on one another.

"Who's the idiot now?" he asks jokingly, giving her a brilliant smile. Hinata finds herself using that phrase more often now to describe him, him and his facial expressions- he seems to have no other.

"Me," Hinata teasingly grumbles before catching his lips on her own.

"Mphm-" he protests suddenly, and pushes Hinata away. "Sorry, but I need to, you know, brush my teeth first!" His mouth had tasted perfectly clean like every morning though; so why was he lying?

Naruto rolls out from under the Hinata-rito and crouched, ready to launch himself at the bathroom door. Hinata makes a move for him, to touch him and ask him to stay, but he gets away before she could catch him.

"What?" Hinata asks the empty air, lightly struggling against her cloth restraints. She didn't want to rip them with a knife; she had just bought the lavender sheets to replace the well-worn orange ones that previous graced her bed.

The water runs in the background as Naruto presumably washes his hands. Then, there is a clink of metal against tile flooring, and a long string of swears inappropriate for sailors, with the word 'kami' well abused. Five minutes pass, and Hinata is surprised that her boyfriend could go on for so long without pausing or lacking originality.

Hinata gives up her sheet escape plan as Naruto's head peaks back out of the restroom. "Sorry about that," he says sheepishly. "I dropped something."

Hinata raises one eyebrow and smiles hopefully. "That's great, but could you get me out of here?"

Naruto blushes and heads over to her, one of his boxer pocket lightly bulging. He untangles her, weaving lavender sheets in and out. His legs straighten and he stands up, a hand extended to Hinata to bring her to his height.

"May I ask you a question?" Naruto asks, holding both of Hinata's hands. She blinks; his seriousness is so sudden, and there's no reason he would be this way.

"Shoot," Hinata cocks her head to the right, her eyes fully focused on Naruto's .

"I should have asked this a couple years ago, I know that for sure now, and I feel stupid for putting it off. You might have gotten killed, or raped, or... You can think of all the stupid things people would do to you to get to me and I feel so stupid as I said before and hell, I'm rambling now," Naruto takes a breath. "I want to ask you, before I loose the nerve again, will you marry me?"

Hinata stands in front of him in shock as he seamlessly produces a box from his boxer pocket and flicks it open. He kneels down in front of her and presents a ring to her. It's a smoothed silver band with small pipes of ruby running through it. The red bleeds into the pure white of an oval-shaped diamond. A gasp escapes from her mouth at it's sheer, simplistic beauty.

"I did something wrong now, didn't I? I- We're still half naked and l also dropped the ring earlier in the bathroom, I feel stupid now and I'm sorry, and Shikamaru did nothing to prepare me for this, Kiba just said to stay calm, and I asked them if they'd ever wanted to marry a girl before but they had no response and shoot, this isn't conventional at all, and I have no idea if I'm making sense-"

"Yes," Hinata manages to whisper. "Yes."

Naruto lets out a sigh of relief. He carefully maneuvers the ring from the blue velvet box and slips it onto Hinata's slender finger. It fits like a glove, as if all that's happening is a fairy tale. It might as well be, Hinata supposes as they stand there in perfect silence. Naruto is the shining knight, Hinata is the flailing princess who needs to be saved from the blanket dragon, and the ring is the proposal.

This was a proposal.

There was going to be a wedding.

The wedding needed to be planned.

"We need to make an invitation list," Hinata croaks. "Sasuke needs to be invited, as he was your former teammate. And Sakura- she can take a day off from the hospital? Sai's easy now that Root is gone and Kiba will jump at the chance for free food. We need to make sure Shino's table has those flowers his bugs like, Temari needs to be invited so she can catch the bouquet... And you need a suit. Shikamaru's mom makes good clothing; maybe we can hire her? I need a dress and we have to tell all of Kohona, Hokage-who-is-now-my-fiancé. Oh, kami. We're getting married. Married. Married!"

Naruto laughs. "I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself," he quietly says. "Calm down."

"We're going to get married," Hinata whispers in amazement and she tightly hugs Naruto. "Kami, we're going to get married."

"Yeah," Naruto hugs her back. "We are."