"Two palms!"
"Wait, Hima, I'm not – "
"Four palms!"
"HIMA!"
"Six palms!"
"H-hey, watch where you swing that thing!"
"Idiot. Just avoid getting hit."
"Easy for you to say, Kawaki. You haven't been on the receiving end of her jyuuken."
"And you have?"
"No, but tou-chan has and it was horrible! I still have nightmares about – "
"Lock on."
Boruto's scream reverberated through the Hyuuga compound, frightened several small animals, and brought Hiashi and Hanabi running. Hiashi then proceeded to sprain his back, and Hanabi burst out laughing at the ridiculous sight in front of her eyes.
"You," said Kawaki, staring blankly at Boruto from across the kitchen table, "are a big baby."
Boruto scowled.
Hima smiled angelically, still hugging her Shukaa-ku plushie, all ten-year-old sugary sweetness and hidden bloodthirsty monster.
"Onii-chan's a babyyy~" she sang.
He clutched the ice pack around his left eye tighter, choosing not to respond and provoke the monster further.
Kawaki snorted. "She just said "lock on" and you freaked out, tripped over your feet, and blacked your eye. You're a big baby."
Boruto muttered something incomprehensible.
Kawaki craned his ear in Boruto's direction. "What was that? Don't mumble, it's annoying."
"'Mnotababy."
"You're not a baby? Hard to see how you aren't."
"Onii-chan is scared of the dark," Himawari said, still in that faux-sweet voice, "and he plays video games with the covers pulled up so that Mama can't find out and get mad, and he – "
"He's scared of little children shouting random words." Kawaki smirked.
"Hey!" Boruto glowered at Kawaki, his teeth bared like a lion.
Its threatening effect was dampened by the fact that the ice pack he was clutching to his face was pink and patterned with cute little bijuu designs. Boruto didn't seem aware of this, however. "Fine. Kawaki, you can go toe-to-toe with Himawari for the next round. Then we'll see who's laughing."
Kawaki shrugged.
"Hima, is that okay with you?" Boruto asked.
Himawari beamed.
Kawaki shrugged again.
"Whatever, I just have to guard against your family's kekkei genkai, right? The Byakugan."
"Ohhh, that won't be enough," Boruto said in a sing-song voice, just as Himawari had earlier. He grinned devilishly, and the family resemblance to bloodthirsty monsters became just a bit more pronounced. "Like I said, her lock on attack took out even tou-chan."
The Byakugan was creepy, Kawaki decided.
Hinata-san's eyes were okay, all blank white canvas with reserves of warmth and kindness in their depths, but that was as long as she didn't...activate them.
When those eyes were activated, the hairs on Kawaki's arms would stand on end, when he saw those awful-looking, pop-out veins making that skin-crawling crackling noise, radiating from the corners of the eyes all the way to the temples and sometimes even to the cheekbones.
Himawari was worse. The sky blue of her eyes faded to blank, blank white. Her eyebrows were uncharacteristically furrowed and her gaze was as frosty as a bitter winter day.
His throat closed up as he realized that she could see him, see the sweat beading down his neck and the shallowness of his breath and the frantic butterfly flapping of his heart.
Jigen...no, Isshiki, he corrected himself, he had this power too, didn't he? A Byakugan in one eye, veins spiraling out into the temple and even to the cheekbones, searching, searching, searching for Kawaki, searching for his empty, parched vessel.
Intellectually, he knew that Himawari was nothing like Isshiki, that the Hyuuga were nothing like the Otsutsuki, but –
"I forfeit."
He didn't want to face her lock on attack.
Hima deactivated her Byakugan, veins fading into oblivion, brows furrowed again, this time not in icy concentration, but simple, childlike confusion.
"Told ya so," Boruto called out from the engawa, legs swinging slowly, placidly.
"Tch." Kawaki forced his heartbeat to calm. "I just didn't feel like fighting a little baby, little baby."
"HEY."
Twin voices of indignation reverberated throughout the Hyuuga compound again, and Kawaki sighed in relief that they didn't notice.
The Hokage's office room was dark and peaceful, the quiet broken only by the sounds of a pen scratching away on some files and the little thumps of a hanko on paperwork.
From what Kawaki understood through Boruto's rants on the subject, in the four years since he'd become the Hokage, Nanadaime had been swamped with paperwork and hadn't been at home as much as he used to be.
Kawaki couldn't relate, obviously. Nanadaime barely left the house at all lately, except to go shopping or take out the trash. Even if the paperwork followed him around like a ghost.
He understood why Boruto didn't seem happy about the previous state of affairs, though, the period when he couldn't spend much time with the Hokage.
A world without Nanadaime wasn't worth living in, after all.
It was good, having him around. Because Kawaki could ask him things, something which wasn't likely to happen if he was in the Hokage Tower.
"Nanadaime?" Kawaki almost said tou-san, but he caught himself just in time.
The Hokage wasn't his dad. No matter how much he seemed to act like one. He had to remind himself that his real dad had done nothing more than use him as a punching bag and sell him away to Jigen.
The Hokage was too good to be his real dad.
The scratching of the pen stopped and Naruto turned around to look at Kawaki, the dim orange of the table lamp casting shadows on his face.
"Yeah, Kawaki?" He was tired. Kawaki could see it in the dark bags under his eyes.
He smiled at Kawaki anyway.
He's not your dad, he scolded himself.
And yet...
"I...uh...I kind...of...can't sleep because..." He cleared his throat and stared at the ground.
Ugh, what was he thinking. This was stupid.
"Because...?" Nanadaime waited patiently.
"BecauseIhavenightmaresaboutHimawari." The words tumbled out in a rush and he kept staring at the polished wooden floor, a slow heat pooling in his ears.
Kawaki half-hoped Nanadaime didn't hear.
No such luck.
Tou-sa – Nanadaime's eyes widened in understanding.
"It's because of her lock on attack, right?" A faraway memory fogged up Naruto's eyes. "Kawaki, I understand completely – "
"D-don't be ridiculous." The heat spread from his ears to his neck. "I-I'm not such a big baby."
The Hokage laughed, and Kawaki had to fight to stop himself from covering his face.
"Boruto said the same thing, and he had nightmares about her for weeks, ya know."
A warm hand settled on his shoulder. Kawaki looked up into the Hokage's smiling face.
"Let's get some hot chocolate. That'll calm you down."
Kawaki watched him tiptoe downstairs to avoid waking up everyone else, in search of the miraculous nightmare cure known as hot chocolate.
The Hokage wasn't his dad, he reminded himself firmly. No matter how much Kawaki wished he was.
A/N: For Day 4: Training Together + Angst/Kawaki. :) There was Time/Dimension Travel too, but I didn't do that one.
Tell me what you think!