AN: This drabble was a necessary side-something for an RP group, in which I play Inoshi. We had been discussing 'first times,' and I think this was Inoshi's last 'first.' Unforgivably short. Characters (Inoshi and Ino) belong to a certain Kishimoto and are from Naruto.


His last 'first' did not happen until he was twenty-two years old.

It was in a new house on the north end of Konoha, so new that it was full of unopened boxes, covered furniture, and plastic-wrapped windows. The street was just far enough away down a long, manicured lawn, that one could barely hear the murmur of distant passer-by, but not so close that they could do more than add to the sanctity of the silence. It was surrounded by trees with long grey shadows, a few pebbled paths, and a stream in the back lined with willows. He'd liked the willows more than anything else, and they had been the final selling point.

His very young wife had gone to visit her family for the weekend. She didn't like dust very much, and the new house had a lot of that, so he'd decided to stay and clean and unpack while she rested. Their daughter was still very young, but he refused to let her out of his sight for the duration of even three days and so she had spent the first half of the day playing in her pen in the living room while he sang to her from the kitchen where he was working. She got sniffly if she couldn't keep an eye on him, and the singing made her feel better when he had to be out of sight.

They had just shared half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, sitting together on the grass outside, and after washing up a lot of misplaced jelly he'd taken three quilts down from the clothesline, folded them, and set the sunny-haired little girl down on top of them. He was carrying them, blankets, little girl, and all up the stairs to the second floor when it happened.

A tiny white hand, star-shaped and dimpled, reached up and pressed over his mouth. "Daddy," she said.

"Mnhnhn?" he answered cheerfully against the warm palm silencing him, because any father will be proud of a very young child who is still so talkative and, of course, he was a bit of a loon over the fact that she'd learned 'daddy' before 'mommy'.

"Daddy," she repeated, staring up at him with wide, solemn blue eyes. "I love you."

And that was the last of Inoshi's firsts.

Everything after that last first was very different for him. They spent the rest of the day singing together and running up and down the halls of their new home before mommy could come there and scold them, but that is another story for another time.