"Inojin onii-chan, can you pass me the burnt umber oil paint, the one next to the aquamarine watercolors?" Himawari asked, the yellow of her jacket coated in various toxic shades of orange, purple, and vivid, tacky green.
Kaa-chan would not be happy when she got back.
"Sure," Inojin said casually, wiping his hands on the floor and leaving a sticky green mess in his wake. His hand passed dangerously close to Boruto's homework, and more importantly, Boruto's video game charger that he'd bought not even two days ago.
This was bad.
Boruto didn't know when they'd become "drawing buddies," nor when Himawari suddenly knew all those confusing-sounding paint terms, or even if tou-chan could protect them at all when kaa-chan came back from her girls' night out to see this.
Nor did he care that much about any of those (admittedly important) things.
Himawari called Inojin "onii-chan."
Inojin onii-chan.
Something unpleasant boiled in his stomach, like the day he'd overstepped his tastebuds' acceptable boundaries and thought eating raw, freshly harvested chili peppers was a good idea.
He was her onii-chan. He was the one who caught her when she fell out of a tree the other day. He was the one who told her how to hold her breath for thirty seconds and sneak melon pan into her pockets without kaa-chan noticing. He was the one who took her out to play tag and combed her hair back when she was sick. He even let her play his video games.
Not that dumbass Inojin.
He glared sharper than a kunai and viciously attacked Shikadai's video game persona, a pale-haired, sinister-looking alien.
"Yo," his best friend commented. "You don't have to be so overprotective and jealous."
"J-jealous?" Boruto held his video game console right in front of his face so that Shikadai couldn't see his blush. "I'm not jealous. I'm just worried about what kaa-chan is gonna say when she gets back."
"Yeah, sure," Shikadai drawled. "That's why you forgot that your mom actually gave them permission to repaint the walls."
Boruto launched yet another attack on Shikadai's alien.
"You know, I'm an only child, so I don't get all this drama, but you can have more than one brother," Shikadai pointed out reasonably. "My mom has two. They drive her insane, but she says that they all have each other's backs when the chips are down."
Boruto said nothing for a while, still hiding his face behind the game.
Then he slowly peeked out, a lone blue eye meeting Shikadai's green.
"You...you better promise me that, okay?"
Shikadai shrugged. "'Kay."
Just then, a shriek of laughter erupted from the art zone-slash-disaster-area. Murky burnt umber oil paint sailed through the air and splattered directly onto Boruto's back and Shikadai's face.
Himawari and Inojin blinked up at them deceptively innocently, and there was dead silence for thirty seconds during which Boruto's alien suffered a crushing defeat.
Then –
Boruto leapt to his feet, meeting Shikadai's gaze again. His best friend nodded.
Inojin and Himawari exchanged looks of terror.
And Hinata was not happy when she came home that night.
A/N: For Day 6: Overprotective! :)