Hello, welcome to a new story. This is me venturing into Naruto again after 5 years. Cross-posted on ao3 where I mainly post things before. Also reviews make my day better. Thank you.
Ship is KakaNaru if anyone's interested and Some other minor stuffs.
"What's today's date, Kakashi? Tell me in details."
Naruto blinked, still not getting the medical procedure while Tsunade gently pried open the copy-nin's eyes, asking mundane questions every once in a while. The heart monitor beeped systematically, totally differently than the blonds' own heart—hammering irritably at the grave expressions on both the Hokage's and Sakura's faces.
"It's february 26th of the lunar year." Kakashi murmured still a little dazed after gaining consciousness. Naruto nods at the raspy voice of his sensei, relief flooding in his system. He was unconscious, in a state of comatose, for nearly eight hours after being hit by the missing Suna nin with an incomplete sealing jutsu.
Naruto grimaced slightly, remembering how he went after the missing-nin with a single mindedness that never looked good on him—angry and without thinking while Sakura screamed behind him to stop. He did stop, only after he realized that the man he was fighting was a blood clone. In the long run, if there was no immediate danger to Kakashi then he would have gone after the small trail of smoke left behind by the clone. But at that moment with their captain unconscious, who was also the only skilled tracker in the team, they had nothing else to do other than return.
"He seems okay," Naruto starts, getting back from his thoughts.
Tsunade and Sakura turned their backs towards him so he couldn't exactly gauge their expression but something definitely changed, the room appearing tenser each second. He gulped then tried again: "Um, Is he—"
"Hatake, look at me. Tell me today's date."
"February 26th of the Lunar year." Kakashi said again a little confused and Naruto still doesn't get what's wrong. He had never heard the fifth calling Kakashi-sensei by his clan name…until and unless there was something serious going on. He hated being left in the dark and with a frustrated sigh he looked down where he was clutching a keychain. He bought it last month because the dog attached to the chain looked a lot like Bisuke, which the blond thought was a perfect gift for the elusive Jounin's birthday—
Wait a damn minute.
Today is September 4th!
At this sudden revelation Naruto looked up, eyes wide and found both the medic experts looking at him.
"But it's September!" Naruto blurted out.
Tsunade raised her eyebrows, probably wishing for a bottle of sake or two. Sakura pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed explosively.
Naruto slipped in love gently, with Kakashi on a monotonous Wednesday afternoon while the wind of the bamboo country blew south. It was as inconspicuous, as it was tender, like the jounin's battle worn hand on Naruto's sweaty locks.
In hindsight (which Naruto was poor at), he should have known this would end poorly.
The bamboo country was surprisingly not only filled with bamboos, but also paddy fields and huge blue lakes. The portly daimyo and her brittle son had greeted them at the gates, bowing before Kakashi as if they were scared. Naruto was curious at such behavior but nodded along remembering what the fifth had drilled into him about diplomatic missions—a mission Naruto was forced to take just after passing his Jounin exams. Kakashi had laughed kind-heartedly at his sullen expression, patting the blond's back before he exploded in front of Tsunade.
"Being a jounin isn't always fun and games, Naruto. Sometimes we kick ass, sometimes we lick ass." The copy-nin said, his eye crinkling at Naruto's horrified expression.
Atleast, bamboo country was peaceful—notwithstanding the vicious rival gang planning on overthrowing the current leader. After a very tense discussion with the daimyo and his ministers Naruto gathered that the country wasn't just offering a trade treaty for the sake of comradeship—they were asking for protection in exchange of surplus. Kakashi had interjected several times with questions about the economic conditions, because while flourishing in surplus value the country was still poor.
"Bamboo has the highest death toll in relation to starvation. Any particular reason for that?" He asked, sitting with one leg over the other in a sort of regal way. If Naruto hadn't known that Kakashi was just an elite shinobi (feared across nations) then he would've guessed him to come from a high standing clan, because the energy he gave off right now was dangerous. It made Naruto shiver.
"W…we are looking into it, Hatake-san." The daimyo's assistant spoke up. "Perhaps, we can give you a detailed report later. You're staying here for two days, after all."
"No need, Kawaki-san." Kakashi smiled, albeit a little differently. "We already gathered enough information, Ne, Naruto?"
Naruto jerked from his stupor, wishing he was paying more attention to his sensei's words instead of posture. After all, Tsunade did send him along so he can get a taste of how these dealings went. Shaking his head, he answered. "Yes, I suppose."
"Good. Master Singhou," the flaxen-haired jounin now referred to the sweating daimyo—it looks like they were not prepared for Kakashi Hatake. "We would like to take our leave, considering our work here is done. We will be leaving tomorrow at dawn."
Before anybody could butt in Kakashi stood up, motioning Naruto to follow him outside. Torn between guffawing and admiring his senior—he choked but followed behind swiftly.
"That was…Kakashi-sensei you were brutal!" Naruto exclaimed happily once they were sufficiently far enough, walking beside paddy fields in leisured pace.
"I suppose," the older Nin just chuckled. Naruto didn't know if it was the autumn sun beating down on them, or it was warm chuckle that made him dizzy. However, he didn't exactly hate the feeling.
"But why are they so…scared of you?" This question was running around the blond's head for a while. He chewed his bottom lips waiting for his sensei to answer but all he heard him do was release a loud sigh then stop walking.
"Come on, let's go there."
With those cryptic words, Kakashi turned towards his left and started trekking up to a small valley. Naruto was visibly confused but didn't want to interrupt his eccentric comrade, so he followed silently until they reached the top of a hill. The blond looked down and felt a gasp leave him, unknowingly. Below him, in front of the hill, all he could see was 90 acre of sprawling, golden field interrupted sometimes by occasional ponds and lakes. He could see children running about, some in the lake and some with their parents (the elders seemed slightly distressed.) It was, due to lack of fanciful words in his vocab, peaceful.
"Kaka-sensei?" Naruto called when he finally plopped down beside the copy-nin. The afternoon sun bathed them into a golden hue and when Naruto looked at Kakashi all he could focus on was the quickly flushing, small ears. It was a weird thing to focus on but Naruto just felt very curious about them.
"The daimyo isn't scared of me. Well, not exactly." Kakashi said suddenly, leaving the blond haired young man perplexed again. "It's my dad."
"Oh," Naruto murmured. He knew that it was a sore subject for Kakashi—his father, the infamous white fang. So he kept quiet and waited with baited breath for the copy-nin to continue.
"River country is only a day away from here, you do know that, right?" Kakashi asked after a while. "My dad—the white fang, he was…well. You could say that he was responsible for a massacre in River country."
The blond nodded solemnly, not exactly believing that Kakashi-sensei's father was responsible for that—but what did Naruto know? He wasn't precisely paying much attention to this side of history. Kakashi chuckled a little harshly this time, "They easily forget that Kakashi Hatake and Sakumo Hatake are two very different people, sharing only a name and a bloodline."
"I think you're better," Naruto blurted out, wondering when his brain to mouth filter will start working. "I think you're-"
"It's okay, Naruto." The older jounin interrupted, he was still not looking at him. Naruto frowned, feeling the air between them getting awkward—and it didn't sit right. All he wanted to do was make Kakashi laugh that warm laughter, the one which makes Naruto feel like he was made out of jelly.
"What about the report?" He tries again. To be perfectly honest, he wasn't at all interested in going over the reports after travelling for a week straight and then entertaining a bunch of elitist fucks. He was mentally wary, wanting to do nothing but to eat ramen and fall asleep.
The ground didn't look that inviting but Naruto could manage, he guessed.
"Mhm. What do you think?"
This was something Kakashi started practicing some months ago—asking Naruto's opinions, whether it was a strategic discourse or some very special recon missions. He started treating the blond as an equal, in their own sanctuary, stepping down from the pedestal of team captain. The younger jounin thought this might be another one of those weird tricks Kakashi deployed trying to make him learn a lesson, sort of. Naruto shrugged, he did always learn better through hand-on experiences.
"Well…" he rubbed under his nose trying to find a solution with the information they gathered, which was harder than mastering the damn rasen-shuriken. The ground looked tempting…
"We could just omit, I guess."
"Omit?" the flaxen-haired jounin parroted back, it felt like he was holding back a chuckle. "I do know that you don't look up to the council but I am sure they can guess we are leaving out something, or why the daimyo need protection."
"Hm, we can make-up something…" the blond laid down then, too tired to even think why it wasn't a great idea. "Somethin' like, you know, doesn't exactly say who the rival gang compromises of."
Kakashi gave a warm chuckle at that and Naruto felt his inside fluttering, a sudden energy swooshed past his fingers and he could envision himself being strangely...alive. However, before he could respond a warm, battle roughed hand sat down on his sweaty forehead very gently—as if Naruto was made out of flowers and butterflies, not demon and slurs. He turned his head towards the long appendage and swallowed thickly.
He has such nice fingers. I wish he—
"I was wondering when you were going to suggest that."
"You know me so well, Kakashi-sensei." Naruto grinned and was thankful to the gods above that his voice didn't mimic the timid Hyuga heir at all. The sudden surge of energy, the happiness and literally…everything about the situation made him jump up and stand in front of his superior—hands flanking his hips and a smile stretching on his lips too much to be comfortable. "What am I thinking right now?"
Kakashi glanced at him, his lazy eyes swiping over his body before the corners crinkled(Naruto has never seen his face, except the long straight nose once in the hospital—but he really couldn't help thinking how ruggedly handsome this man was.), "Maa, you want to swim right now?"
Naruto blinked but his smile didn't falter. It wasn't exactly what he was thinking but…it will do. "That's amazing! Let's do it!"
He offers Kakashi his right hand, not that he needs help standing but he really wanted to feel those hands on him, again. The older jounin stared at out-reached hand with a look that Naruto can't quite understand—perhaps he shouldn't have offered? Iruka-sensei did tell him that Kakashi never really liked to be touched unnecessarily…
And then Kakashi reaches over and holds Naruto's smaller, sweat slicked palms in his own—for no reason other than Naruto is offering…and then, that.
That feeling.
That's when he knew, understood and accepted what a slippery slope he gently fell into.
"What if we do it ourselves, the removal?" Naruto is numbly surprised that his voice is not shaking, that his whole body is standing still as a rock and not shivering when the pale calloused palm rubbed against his sensitive fingertips. The older man just shot him a mocking look, but the vague amusement was still lingering in his eye.
By the end of the day Naruto had bathed in a cool blue pond, written an inaccurate report, realized he has an obsession with Kakashi's hands and is madly, hopelessly in love for the first time.
Naruto was not ashamed to admit that he wasn't ever scared—it happened more than once or twice in his whole nineteen years of existence. This panic however, closely resembled the one time when he couldn't find Kakashi's chakra and Konoha was in shambles.
"Fix him," he begs with a soft tilt to his voice.
He is standing ten foot away from the older jounin's general bed with the fifth and his pink-haired teammate. "With what?" Tsunade asked, "My magic wand?"
"With your medical degree? You fixed Genma-san when he couldn't remember stuffs."
"Naruto," Sakura started. Her voice held almost the same amount of worry as his, "This isn't just a normal case of amnesia. Kakashi-sensei was hit by an incomplete seal and we don't know how to break it. We are not that competent with Fuinjutsu."
"Okay," Naruto took a deep breath."What do we do?"
Tsunade shook her head as she drank from the water flask, which surprisingly didn't smell like water. "We wait. It's an incomplete seal; it will hopefully fade away in no time."
They all turned around to look at Kakashi walking towards them, pulling the blue standard-issued shirt down his abdomen. He looked fit as a horse.
"Sensei, do you know who I am?" Naruto asked tentatively.
The flaxen-haired jounin raised one of his perfectly sculpted eyebrows while Sakura elbowed him, harshly. "He's only missing a couple of months, Naruto."
"Hokage-sama." Kakashi nods towards the fifth who was suspiciously mumbling something about infants who can't count. He looked remarkly…unconcerned for someone who woke up a year into the future. But that's just the Hatake charm, he thinks. "If it's an incomplete seal then the issue is going to resolve itself, don't worry."
"Goddamn Brat, how cliché can you be? Amnesia?" Tsunade said while throwing her hands up in the air.
"Are you worried about me, aunty?" Kakashi said with a shit-eating grin that made his eye drop into a crescent—the expression became a little more intense when a vein seemingly throbbed on the fifths' smooth forehead. Then he turns to look at Naruto and…and the expression softens, the mocking charm melting away. It was so very private.
Intimate.
Which became even more so when the jounin ran a calloused thumb across the blond's scarred cheeks, just under his eyes. The entire room went silent, except the beeping heart monitor. "I don't remember how we started dating, Naruto."
Naruto forgets how to breathe.
He then acknowledged, distantly, how there were four pairs of eyes on them. There was Tsunade, who is working her way towards a heart-attack, Sakura whose eyes started resembling large dishes, and two other nurses just hovering by. Naruto knows they are all staring, but he cannot move, especially when Kakashi's other hand clutches his slacked ones into a tight grip. He is still looking at the jinchuriki with soft, soft eyes.
"I am sorry," the flaxen-haired jounin said very sincerely.
Naruto swallowed around a dry throat and didn't speak. He just pressed a little closer to the comforting warmth.
Because it felt amazing.
right.
amazingly right.
And Naruto could probably stay here for the rest of his life, granted that Kakashi kept looking at him like that, and doesn't remove his hands and—
"What makes you think that you're in a relationship with that gaki?" Tsunade questions a little louder after clearing her throat for the third time didn't work.
Something changed and the blond could feel it in his bones, the way Kakashi tried to pull away slowly. Without thinking consciously he held the pale fingers tighter, letting out a soft whimper of disapproval. The older jounin smiled; the one that reached his eyes and shined in his grey ones.
"I don't feel…I feel connected to him." Kakashi finally explained but his eye never left Naruto's sky blue ones. All the attention was making the blond feel light-headed and he smelled so amazing—
"O-of course." Sakura screeched. "Connected."
"And the way he looked at me, I felt whole." Naruto mildly accepted the words coming out of his sensei's mouth—not entirely making sense. He felt tears tricking along his eyelids before he heard a loud crash. The blond distractedly looked behind the tall figure and found the water flask broken into hundreds of pieces. Sakura's jaws, if not for structural improbability, would've hit the floor long ago.
Yep, Naruto agrees.