eyy NSFW WARNING again y'all, a lot of the lead up is p important to kakashi's thought process, so i think if u dont care for the sexy times u can safely skip starting from "toshiro is asleep when kakashi gets home" to the end of the scene, picking up at "maybe they're both a little bent,"
*****also i don't really taking up the word count by actually including authors notes, so if u have super pressing questions or just wanna vibe about the fic, i set up a tumblr spideyfoof !
With the Chunin Exams fast approaching, it seems as if every eligible genin is training to their limits. More often than not, this leads to quite a few landing themselves in the hospital for chakra exhaustion or some other similar ailment. As Toshiro is sending off a mulish boy of fourteen—hoping to earn a vest in the next few weeks—with a freshly healed burn scar, he runs into Kabuto.
The silver-haired teen is well-liked yet relatively unknown, an odd conundrum. People know of him but they do not know him, and well—some people are just like that. Shinobi especially. Toshiro himself hadn't really dwelled on the idea of having or making friends when he'd been younger. Now, however, he doesn't think he'd give up the bonds he's forged for anything in the world.
"Sensei, it's good to see you."
Toshiro smiles, brows slightly furrowed. "You as well, Kabuto-san. I see you're still working hard."
The teen glances down at the stack of folders in his arms, a sheepish expression crossing his bespectacled features. "Oh, no, it's nothing really. I find myself with too much time on my hands these days, so I've been offering help to the senior staff."
"Wow," Toshiro replies, and finds himself believing his next words. "How kind of you. With an attitude like that, you'll be making your way up the ladder in no time."
Behind his round glasses, Kabuto's midnight gray eyes go wide, "T-That's the last thing on my mind!"
Toshiro laughs softly, knocking their elbows together gently as they walk. "Relax, I'm just teasing you! Though I do think you could do it if you tried. Thank you for all your hard work, you really make a difference here."
The sound of their footsteps rings into the quiet, along with the faintest exhale from Kabuto, just a tad too heavy. A tad too loud. Toshiro glances over at the younger man, but there is a disarming smile affixed to that pale face and nothing else. The round lenses perched atop his straight nose glint under the harsh fluorescent lights, hiding whatever emotion might possibly be present in the man's dark eyes. Toshiro gleans nothing but kindness, nothing but the soft edge of Kabuto's smile.
"Thank you. I'll see you around, Aikawa-sensei." The man says. He moves ahead, turning a corner while Toshiro pauses, sandals squeaking against the freshly polished floors.
"See you…" Is all Toshiro manages, wondering why that interaction felt so odd.
Shikamaru has grown from a child of soft lines and bright, big eyes; too big, big enough to see the world and all its faults. That doesn't mean, of course, that he understands it all. Not then, and perhaps not now. Not yet. But every day he grows, that softness shifting into something sharper, like hot, molten metal hammered into a blade. Toshiro can see that sharpness too, flinty and piercing in Shikamaru's eyes.
It comes in bursts, during the times he's most needed and the times you least expect it. Once again, Toshiro can't help but think that Shikamaru would make a good Hokage. But that is not to be, as Naruto's dream is like a living, breathing entity, and Shikamaru is helpless in the face of blue, blue eyes. The shadow behind the sun.
"Shi-ka-ma-ru~!" Naruto crows, loud and sweet. The tang of freshly peeled oranges hangs heavy in the air. Their sticky fingers interlock as Shikamaru tries to fend off Naruto's wiggling hands, heavy with intent to tickle.
"Naruto!" The Nara groans, "Quit messin' around!"
The team sits among the flowering bushes in the Hatake's backyard, a blanket spread below their bodies. Before them is an assortment of fruit and half-eaten trays of gooey, store-bought dango glistening in the harsh summer sun. Sakura laughs at Shikamaru's misfortune and swipes an apple slice from the boy's plate.
Behind Toshiro's spot on the engawa, the door slides open. Team 10 wanders out, bare feet padding softly against the hardwood.
"Gin!" Sakura exclaims, pushing herself up from the blanket. Both Shikamaru and Naruto blink, limbs going slack with surprise.
Gin's eyes widen when Sakura reaches up to pull him off the engawa. "I need to show you my progress on that shuriken technique you showed me!" She says, pale features flushed with eagerness. Her happiness blooms like the springtime trees she's named after. The two wander over to the designated practice area, Sakura's hand still wrapped around Gin's wrist.
Sasuke takes a step after them, then halts, face twisted up like he's stumbled upon a particularly difficult problem. Pitch black eyes track the two, his mouth set in a harsh frown, bloodless and worried.
Ino hooks her arm through his and drags him off to Naruto and Shikamaru. The four fit on the blanket with ease, and Ino proceeds to help herself to some of the fruit still left out. Sasuke leans against Shikamaru's shoulder and grumpily accepts an orange slice from Naruto. The blond boy squints, face narrowed in the usual foxy manner.
He leans across Shikamaru, tanned cheek brushing the Nara's. "Hey, hey, Sasuke! Why do ya look like someone spit in your ramen?"
Shikamaru jerks his head back at Naruto's proximity, resignation heavy in the amber of his eyes. He adjusts himself with the familiar ease of someone who's had their personal space intruded upon one too many times. Though his skin is dark, the apples of his cheeks deepen even further, to a ruddy rouge. The corners of his lips purse downwards, gaze tracking to the side in reluctant embarrassment.
"Mind your business!" Sasuke snaps in reply, normally pale face marred with rosy hues. At his side, Ino shares a glance with Shikamaru, knowing and exasperated. She, while Shikamaru looks completely done with the situation, has never appeared more impish, if the way her eyes gleam is any indication.
Little secrets spoken with glancing looks and blushing cheeks. Shikamaru's knuckles bump Naruto's on the blanket. Amber-dark eyes track the frustrated movement of Naruto's hair as the boy vehemently argues with Sasuke. They bicker like long-lost siblings, while Ino interjects to fuel the fire at carefully chosen intervals.
From the other side of the yard, Sakura's laughter is high and loud, straight from her belly. Her elbow brushes Gin's as the two wander back over. "Naruto!" Her mouth slows, lips hesitant. A look of determination crosses her sun-warm features. "Sasuke! Quit arguing, we're genin now!"
"Mou~ Sakura-chan, he started it!"
Sasuke doesn't look at her. His ears burn red. "Tch."
"Well I'm ending it!"
They all settle together, Gin stuck between Sasuke and Ino, and Sakura leaning into Naruto's open side. The food begins to disappear rapidly, greedily ingested by the rag-tag group of growing teens. Not once does Gin's whole face get revealed, food mysteriously vanishing from his hands. It starts up another argument about seeing his face, one that Toshiro has overheard a thousand times before—though about Kakashi, mostly.
Toshiro stays quiet, pressing his fingertips to his mouth to wipe away the smile there. Later, he finds all six of them slumbering in the orange evening light, hands sticky with the remnants of their snacks, their limbs tangled and bodies piled haphazardly. Sasuke has one hand tangled in Gin's shirt and the lower half of his body thrown over Shikamaru. Naruto's face is crammed against Sakura's head, pink strands caught in his drooling mouth. Ino somehow ended up with her knee against Gin's shoulder, and her head pillowed on his thigh. Sakura sleeps the most peacefully out of all of them, her arm stretched out under naruto, fingers tangled with Shikamaru's.
He snaps a picture. There's quite a few people who will want copies.
The thing is, Kakashi had previously assumed that getting together with Toshiro would sate the feverish inferno in his gut. Instead, he's only grown more desperate, hunger pooling achingly hot and volatile down every inch of his body. His jaw aches with the need to bite, to sink his knife-life teeth into the soft, supple flesh of Toshiro—of any part, really, from the other man's soft thighs to his freckled neck. Just to see that pale skin flush pale rose, to see it bead with salty sweat and split and bleed carnation red. Some days, Kakashi thinks he's sick. Twisted. Cracked, in a way that can't possibly be fixed. His formative years are slick with rivers of red, red blood and gore-stained fingertips. He remembers killing three men and waking that night with an erection, fifteen and all body-hot hormones and murderous, tempestuous intent. Remembers how sex and death sat side by side in his head, never touching but always present. He never gave in to his body's desires as a growing teen or young adult, not until Toshiro.
Child soldiers really don't grow right. Always a little twisted, a little too sharp. Like snarling roots and knotted tree trunks, the ugliest, most vicious trees in the forest. The ones that either splinter in a storm or weather through the ages. Shisui is the same, perhaps that's why Kakashi tolerates him so much. They look into each other and see a mirror, their faces reflected back in each other's eyes. Shisui grins too sharply, like razor wire, like the thin lines across skin drawn by a knife. Kakashi doesn't smile at all, just uses his eyes to lie, to mock and divert and destroy. The same beast in different shapes.
He wonders if it's okay to like the way Toshiro bleeds and bruises as he screams his ecstasy, sweet and high like tacky candy and summer ice cream. He wonders if it's okay that the pretty picture Toshiro makes when he's shaking, sweaty and covered in cum and blood turns Kakashi on to the point where he sees stars, feels wolves tearing at his mind. Violence invades every aspect of Kakashi's life; he eats, sleeps and breathes it, was raised with a knife in one hand and the expectation to slit someone's throat in the other.
He wants to be soft.
Wants to be everything Toshiro desires, deserves.
But there's no denying that his cock swells when it's a little rougher, a little wild and burning and heart-racing—when adrenaline kicks in and that sick, grimy part of his brain howls and rattles the bars of his self-control. He doesn't know how to separate his sexual desire from the homegrown violence he's indoctrinated with.
Toshiro holds Kakashi's face like he's something precious, dripping gore and ravenous teeth and all. The shorter, younger man bites and bruises right back, egging on that wild part of Kakashi and he thinks, maybe, just maybe, underneath the pretty mouth and soft eyes and rose-petal flesh, Toshiro is just as yearning and bloody as Kakashi.
Kakashi, who never needed sex, never wanted it, now can't bring himself to stop seeking it out. Seeking the warmth and wetness, that salty tang, the rabbit-thump of Toshiro's heart while Kakashi looms, wolf and murderer, over him. And whenever Kakashi slips, whenever he sinks and goes too far, Toshiro is there to pull him back. To teach him to set boundaries, to say no, to push, to wonder, to experiment. Because they don't teach six-year-olds sex education; no, they send them to war, to die in muddy banks and bloody rivers. To grow into awkward, gangly bodies, to have their first erections during fights, when they're sore and bloody, in the steamy, pulse-pounding adrenaline of it all, because teenaged bodies get turned on over everything and nothing at all.
(It's all blood flow. All accidental. All natural. It's all the experience battlefield children get.)
Toshiro is asleep when Kakashi gets home. Slack and gorgeous against dark sheets, loose yukata in disarray. The blanket is kicked to the ground, and the fabric of his white yukata twists around his freckled legs and slips to reveal stark collarbones, heavy with shadows. Hair spills loose around his head, tangled in curled fingers and caught in the damp of his bottom lip. Kakashi is a silent wraith, swathed in the gloom of the night and peering like an intruder at the sleeping siren in his bed. He feels dirty, just standing here and watching, reveling in the steady breathing and rise and fall of Toshiro's chest.
One side of the yukata pulls open a bit more than the other, revealing the milky expanse of Toshiro's chest; a pert, dusky pink nipple, the ripple of muscle taut over a fragile rib cage. The man has always slept a little too easy in the house. A little too heavily.
Something hot curls in Kakashi stomach, twisting and tingling. He finds himself closer without meaning, fingers wandering over the soft fabric, too fearful to reach for the warm skin both bared and below. It's late, he doesn't want to wake Toshiro. He just wants to admire, to burn this image into his head, until he can recall it with perfect accuracy a hundred years from now.
The wolf rattles Kakashi's chest. His fingers tremble, curling in loose white fabric. The plush, corded muscles of Toshiro's thighs are slowly revealed, the yukata pulling taut at his waist. Kakashi swallows tightly, remembering exactly how it feels to fuck those thighs, remembering the soft swell of them in shorts, the taut clench that comes with a high kick. Kakashi thinks he has a problem, because he's indecently attracted to this area of Toshiro, likes biting and sucking marks into them, likes squeezing the trembling muscle, pressing his fingertips into the plush flesh until it bruises.
Toshiro's yukata is completely open now, revealing his bottom half entirely. He's wearing dark blue boxers. Kakashi glances down to his traitorous hands, brows furrowed.
A hand brushes his thigh.
Kakashi stiffens, meeting Toshiro's sleepy, barely open eyes.
His smile is buttery soft, endearing, "Pervert."
A huff escapes Kakashi's lips, and he pulls them back to flash predatory teeth. Toshiro's hand tangles in Kakashi's pants, pulling him insistently. Kakashi's knees sink into the mattress, and he hovers his body over Toshiro's content, pliant form. All sleep soft and angelic in his mussed yukata, too much skin showing—a demon, rather than an angel, perhaps, an incubus.
Toshiro's pale hands slide up his own body, over rippling abs and the slight swell of his pecs. Long fingers brush carefully over ruddy nipples, pinching and rubbing until they stand to attention, flush and trembling. Soft breaths escape Toshiro's mouth as he plays with his chest, and Kakashi stares, enraptured, as arousal slowly fills the air and drowns out all other senses.
He watches quietly, still as a statue, eyes glinting and sharp and unwavering. He doesn't move, doesn't blink, barely breathes.
"You like to watch." Toshiro whispers, like a secret. Like it's something not meant for the air. His lips are parted and trembling, wet with the swipe of a slick tongue. Pink slowly shrinks under an expanding pupil. His hips undulate erotically, offering no sensation but revealing lustful desperation. Those pretty fingers continue to pluck at pretty nipples. Kakashi thinks he could die, shame and lust and wild, wild fervor colliding into a maelstrom of emotion.
One of Toshiro's hands slides back down his chest, past quivering muscles. It slips under the last scrap of fabric—the boxers—covering his slowly hardening cock. Unseen, hidden, like it's something Kakashi's not supposed to bear witness to. Toshiro strokes his cock in his underwear, the fabric shifting and bulging with the movements of his wrist, wet spots dampening the already dark cloth. He moans breathily, lower back arching. His thighs shake.
Kakashi's throat is dry, and his own underwear is growing very, very wet. Arousal surges through him like chakra before a jutsu, but he still can't bring himself to move. He just hovers above Toshiro's body on his hands and knees, watching. An eye tracks the slow descent of a single bead of sweat, heart thumping erratically as it slips down the curve of Toshiro's jaw and wets the straining muscles of his neck.
"You like it, don't you?" Toshiro goads, as straight-forward as usual. As blown with lust as his eyes are, they're still piercing in a different way. The kind of soul-searing, flesh-flaying way that makes Kakashi remember that Toshiro is a child genius too. "I can tell."
"I do." Kakashi breathes, or maybe groans. He can't tell anymore. He's a sick man.
Toshiro moans, sucking his bottom lip into his stupidly sinful mouth, pulling the flesh until it goes bloodless white, his hips shaking. He still looks drowsy, still slack with sleep, but he humps the air and thumbs his nipple like he's been awake for days, like he's been craving Kakashi just as much as Kakashi craves him.
Unthinkable.
"You can watch." Toshiro murmurs, pink eyes hazy, "I don't mind."
"Yeah?" Kakashi licks his dry lips, hoarse.
Toshiro lets out a soft whimper, a quiet chorus of oh, oh, oh's that makes Kakashi tingle all down his spine like he's been electrified. He throws his head back, champagne hair twisting under the movement, "Nng! Oh, oh, Kakashi, Kakashi—"
Kakashi's cock pulses angrily against the now too-tight fabric of his pants. Every breath rattles his chest, like his bones are made of loose screws and metal. "I like watching you touch yourself. I like the way you look when you want my touch so badly it hurts, and you make yourself cum and it's not enough—it's never enough because it's not my mouth or hands or cock, it's just you, and I can make you cum so good, I swear—" Kakashi groans out a sharp expletive as Toshiro keens, those pretty, flushed thighs trembling.
"I think something's wrong with me," he admits mournfully, pants it into the open, steamy air like a dog—like the animal he must be. "I want to make you cry. I want to make you dirty."
Toshiro's breath catches and his body shudders violently, like he's been shocked. "You can, you can—" The man gasps, "Do it, do whatever you want—"
Yes, some dark, raptor-like part of Kakashi's stupid animal brain coos, Yes, yes, yes. He swallows audibly, mouth set in a rueful, crooked smile. How did he get here? From a man who avoided all attachment to a man who's so fucking gone on another, so desperate for another's flesh and heart and soul.
We are wolves, Kakashi. And we are human, too. We fall prey to all the follies of man.
(Father, I am the prey and the predator.)
Kakashi wants to fall. Wants to sink into Toshiro's skin and bury into the man's heart, wants to crack open his ribcage and offer his beating, bloody organ in return.
"Make yourself cum." He orders softly, tonguing the words with far too much care, "Keep fucking your fist until you spill all over your pretty little hand and ruin your underwear. Tell me to touch you."
"Touch me!" Toshiro obliges, legs spread indecently, invitingly. Still, not one bit of them touches. It would be so easy, too easy. Just inches apart, hovering, straining—
Kakashi grins, wolfish, dangerous. "No."
"Please," Toshiro begs, voice catching. His chest heaves and trembles, sweat-damp and flushed a pretty red that Kakashi can barely make out in the dim light. "Touch me, please. Kakashi, I want you—"
"That's it," Kakashi murmurs, cock pulsing with every jumping, excited beat of his twisted heart. "Moan for me. Tell me how badly you want me."
"Want you, want you, want—" Toshiro shakes, hips bucking wildly, desperately searching for the friction Kakashi refuses to provide. His hand continues to jerk his cock, pace stuttering, wetness smeared all over the front of his boxers. The fabric makes sticky, squelching sounds. "I'll die—oh," A moan, long and drawn out, spun like cotton candy, tooth-rotting and bone-shaking. "Fuck me, want you to fuck me—"
"No." Kakashi says, a sick sort of glee in the curve of his smile.
Toshiro goes cross-eyed, his muscled thighs spasm and jerk, and quickly, all too quickly, horny and desperate and lewd— "Cummin', cumming—" he babbles.
Kakashi rips the underwear right off of Toshiro's body, the sound of tearing fabric ignored. He watches with greedy eyes as Toshiro cries out, hips arched up and cock purpled and pulsing, cum shooting in spurts from the swollen, ruddy tip. The younger man sobs into the summer night, abdomen rippling. Picturesque in his beautiful, pleasured agony, muscles slackening and mouth in a perfect O.
Kakashi leans back and gets off the bed. Toshiro watches with blissed out eyes, acceptance in every line of his sex-flushed face.
Kakashi takes off his clothes.
He waits for the safeword.
It doesn't come.
Maybe they're both a little bent, a little twisted from a childhood of too heavy expectations and desires, of pressure never meant to be foisted upon young, growing shoulders. The darkness in Kakashi is wide and gaping, a bloody maw lined with teeth. Toshiro smiles and licks the blood from his scarred flesh. When Kakashi is a rabid, snarling animal, Toshiro is the hand that feeds.
What a pair they make.
The morning of the Chunin Exams dawns bright and warm, a few fat, cottony clouds floating about the expansive blue. The streets are loud with excited chatter, gossip about foreign nin the highlight of a civilian's day. It's not often those who aren't shinobi come into contact with foreign ones—and live to tell about it. For the Hatake household, it's just another day. No one is taking the Chunin Exams this time, not meeting the six month minimum.
It's important to Itachi, however, because it's his first time showcasing his capabilities in ruling over Konoha to another Kage, one older and more experienced than him. As far as Toshiro knows, only the Kazekage is showing up, but shinobi from Kusa, Ame, Taki and Oto—the last of which is a country Toshiro isn't familiar with—have been wandering around the designated streets for the past week.
Itachi has been far more stressed than usual.
And Toshiro still hasn't brought up the prospect of having Test Tube Babies with Kakashi, even though he promised himself he would. Or at least he'd try. Which he hasn't, at all. The project still has a ways to go, so it's not like he can't afford to put off the conversation for a while. It's odd to not just bare his heart, to not be blunt and straightforward with his thoughts and feelings. Maybe it's because this topic is deeply personal and they're both fractured, tenuous beings. They still have moments where they waver and crash, before cresting over the next hill, the next bump in the road.
Kakashi, more than Toshiro, needs time. Time to heal, time to change, time to grow. The man's mind was battered into a blade at a young age, and he's only now learning that it wasn't right. What he went through was wrong. Kakashi is still learning how to be a functioning adult.
Bringing up children of their own—babies—might set back that progress.
They aren't ready.
(Kakashi isn't ready.)
Chiasa is busy more often than not with her team, growing far too fast into a woman with plans of her own. Tsushika and Atsuzumi are always found at her side. Toshiro barely ever sees them apart—and he can only hope the other kids grow as close to their teams as she has. There's no doubt in his mind that Team 7 and Team 10 will, as they are already basically living in each other's pockets. Team 8 and Team 5? Who knows.
Sai has slowly and gradually warmed up to his team, though he clearly favors Hinata over Kiba. Toshiro knows this for a fact, as he witnessed Sai and Ino walking hand in hand while gossiping about their teams.
Shockingly—Tsunade finally left. She'd overstayed far longer than anticipated, likely caught up in nostalgia for the life she left behind. Shizune was a great help at the hospital, obviously skilled in medical ninjutsu, though definitely not on par with Tsunade herself. (A hard feat.)
Tsunade never showed her face at the hospital.
(Scared of blood, Shizune had confided.)
And—well. Something in Toshiro...softened. Because sometimes he forgets that people are people, and they work in their own individual, unique ways. Tsunade lived through war, was raised in a Konoha more accepting of three year olds with kunai, of turning babies into soldiers that cut their fingers on blades before they lost their baby teeth. PTSD? Expected.
She was probably riddled with it. To be so terrified of blood that you can't even continue your life's work? Something integral in Tsunade is cracked and bleeding. Maybe it was better for her to run, to escape the cage that disregarded her pain in favor of pushing for her skills. Skills she couldn't stand to use anymore.
He lets the bitterness in his chest fade. He doesn't think he'd make the same decisions as her, doesn't think he'd end up leaving this village behind. While she runs to escape, he runs to the future. He will use his pain to drag Konoha along the path of change. And he's not mad at her for not doing the same.
(Because he has a life inside his head that doesn't belong to this world, and all she had was blood under her fingernails and ash on her tongue.)
"So." Inoka drawls, her manicured nails tapping a beat against polished wood.
Fuyumi sips her tea demurely, her pale skin betraying her with an easy flush that spreads from cheek to cheek. She doesn't reply, but the blush only serves to goad Inoka into spluttering laughter.
"Oh my Sage!" The Yamanaka gasps, her exclamation loud in the little tea shop. "Who is it! Tell me, tell me, tell me!"
"Inoka," Toshiro admonishes, though he can't help the grin pulling at his lips.
Fuyumi sends him a betrayed look, obviously catching the lack of intent behind his reprimand. He shrugs in return.
"What? I'm a little curious too. You've been disappearing a lot." He admits, "So…"
"Do you have a boyfriend or what!" Inoka finishes eagerly, palms slapping against the table.
"Do you?" Fuyumi mutters back, attempting to hide her face behind her tiny teacup.
Inoka groans and leans back, "NO! Aoba is the densest man on the planet, and I witnessed Toshiro and Kakashi flounder like blind babies!"
"Thanks."
She shoots him a grin, "You're welcome. Still not as bad as Genma and Raidou."
"Well, that's something, I suppose."
"Let's not get off track," Inoka turns her sharp, pupil-less gaze on Fuyumi. "C'mon, spill. What, can't tell your bestest friends in the whole wide world about your secret little rendezvous?"
The Uchiha sighs in exasperation, tucking a strand of blue-black hair behind an ear. It's out of her usual braid today, spilling over one of her shoulders. "It's...nothing. I don't know." Her brow furrows delicately, a shadow passing over her pale, pretty features.
Toshiro and Inoka share a look. Well, that doesn't sound good.
"Is it your clan?" Inoka asks, tone much softer.
Fuyumi's mouth twitches in an aborted smile, "You could say that. My parents expect me to marry an Uchiha man of their choosing and have a child as soon as possible."
Pink eyes narrow, tongue in cheek. "Let me guess," he says, "Whoever you're seeing isn't Uchiha, or approved."
She doesn't reply for a moment, shoulders slumped with a great weight that Toshiro can't see, can only imagine. Her eyes still retain the same too-serious expression they always do, "I wouldn't say we're seeing each other."
"But you're interested." Inoka states it like a fact, not a question.
Fuyumi tilts her head, the flush reigniting on her skin. "I would not be...opposed to further interaction."
"I would not be opposed, she says," Inoka mutters, "Man, don't be so formal. It's just us, not your stick-up-the-ass family."
Toshiro has an idea of who it could be, mostly from Shisui's hints and ribbing. Him and Fuyumi are pretty close, being first cousins. Toshiro knows the other man is actually pretty concerned about the whole situation, and neither of them want to see Fuyumi pressured into a marriage she wants no part in.
"Isn't your clan pretty careful with...love related issues?" He inquires. "If you say you've got your eye on someone, won't they lay off?"
"Not necessarily," Fuyumi replies carefully, obsidian eyes peering unseeingly down at the table. "If I'm not in a relationship, then something as minor as a...passing crush won't stop them for long."
Inoka hums, "But if you were in a relationship?"
Fuyumi squints up at the other woman, "What exactly are you suggesting."
"Well," The blond drawls, "You could always tell them you're in a relationship."
"That would be lying!" Fuyumi splutters, "I'd be found out instantly—they'd want to meet him—"
"So let them!"
Fuyumi makes another sputtering noise. "He—But!"
"He doesn't seem the type to leave you in a poor situation." Toshiro comments idly, fingers tracing the rim of his tea cup.
Inoka's eyes laser in on him, mouth agape. "You know who it is?"
He flicks his gaze towards Fuyumi, who looks caught off guard. "I have a guess. Then again, that doesn't exactly mean much, as I don't know his name." His guess is a certain cat-masked ANBU man with Mokuton, which is definitely a can of worms the Uchiha would be up in arms about.
Fuyumi sighs, "You know that's classified information. I'm going to pretend you didn't say that."
"Ho?" Inoka raises a brow, lips unfurling into a gleeful smile, "So it's that kind'a thing, huh? Then I'll find out on my own. Don't worry Fuyumi, we'll get you your man!"
"That's not—What about your man!"
"Double dates! Think of it, Fuyumi, think of it! No, wait, triple dates if we can get that scarecrow on board!"
"You're thinking too much!"