January 1st
"So, you've finally discovered the opposite sex." The chuckle that accompanies Kurama's voice resonates in Naruto's head.
"Kurama!" Naruto, shocked by the fox spirit's sudden interest in his doings "Have you been watching this whole time?!"
"Your love life holds no meaning for me. However, I do find the Hyuga girl a very fitting match for my jinchuriki." Kurama yawns showing general interest in Naruto's doings.
"Well that's great and all but do you think that maybe you could have waited until she wasn't lying her naked in front of me to have this conversation?" Naruto rolls his eyes, it is now his turn to chuckle.
Kurama sighed, as he receded back into Naruto's subconscious.
"Naruto." Hinata's voice sounds softly, drawing his attention back to her. Making his way back up he moves, resting his head on the pillow next to hers.
"So?" Naruto questions, as he twirls a stray piece of Hinata's hair around his finger, she rolls onto her side to face him.
"It was, well it was interesting…" Trailing off Hinata links Narutos fingers with hers.
"Interesting hmmm." He pauses to look at their joined hands. "In what way?"
"It was good." A slight blush creeps up Hinata's neck moving to her cheeks. "Really good Naruto, at first I thought it was gonna be uncomfortable with you being so close to me down there but it was well good is such an undescriptive word." Her lips draw a thin line across her face as she searches for a way to tell him how it felt.
"You're so cute when you're flustered." Naruto teases, pulling Hinata into his chest.
His arms circled her waist, holding her tight, after a moment Hinata gave a content sigh.
Her skins so soft Naruto thinks to himself, running his hand up and down her back, stopping right over her ass. Only small hardly noticeable scars, except for that one.
"Can we just stay like this?" She questions. "Just you and me, this close always?"
"I think I could handle that." Naruto slips a finger under her chin, tilting her face up to meet his. Their lips meet briefly. "But I don't think anyone else would support our decision. It would cause us to be rather unproductive."
"Is Uzumaki Naruto, the one who majored in slacking off in school, lecturing me on productivity?" Hinata giggles as she places another light kiss on his lips.
"Hey someone's gotta take over for Kakashi-sensei one day." His tone turned from playful to serious.
"Ah, yes and who am I to stand, well lay, in the way of your dream."
"But a man can have two dreams, right?"
"Hhhmmm." Hinata makes a satisfying noise as she buries her face in his chest once more.
The pair lay, enjoying one another's company. As Hinata's breath slows, Naruto gently pulls his arm from beneath her, pulling his sheet up to cover her.
"Hinata, oh Hinata." Naruto's voice comes from far away, slowly drifting through her head.
"Yes?" She replies, sleep coating her voice.
"You've been asleep for over an hour."
"Oh," she looks around the room confused, feeling her naked body wrapped in a soft sheet, seeing her clothes scattered across the floor. "Did you just sit here and watch me?" Looking up at him, he had moved to sit up and rest against the wall behind them.
"I was thinking, mostly. I may have dozed off for a bit myself." Naruto yawns.
"What were you thinking about?" Hinata questions, moving to sit next to him, she nestles her head into his shoulder.
"The first time you told me you loved me." Naruto smiles down at her. "The first time you saved my life."
"You actually remember that, I was never sure if you actually heard me or not."
"Well when a pretty girl you never expected would come and save you appears in front of you confessing her love it's kinda hard not to notice." Naruto teases, ruffling her hair. "Like I said earlier I'm sorry it took so long for me to tell you back."
"There is something I've always wondered about."
"Huh?" Naruto questions
"How'd you do it? Beat Pain I mean, no one ever really told me what happened after I went unconscious." Hinata looks up at him, concern coming to her face as she sees the look of sadness on his. She turns to sit across from him, reaching out and Hinata gently runs her fingers across Naruto's cheek. "What's wrong?"
"You…well Hinata you're precious to me." A soft smile accompanies his words. "And to think of you, even three years later, covered in rubble after being smashed into the ground and all that blood still hurts me. I'm sorry you had to do that, I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to protect you. Is that where he hit you?" He asks, finger glancing over a round scar, the chakra rod must have just missed her lung.
"Naruto-kun." Hinata speaks, her voice almost a whisper. "Please don't apologize for that day. If you remember my words, you'll remember it was my choice. I would do it a hundred times over if it meant saving you." She moves his hand from her scar, moving it up holding it against her face. "This scar reminds me that I'm strong, that I will do anything for you. It doesn't make me sad." She smiles reassuringly. "It's a constant reminder that the man I love saved me, saved our village.
"It may not make you sad, but it does me. I should have been strong, I shouldn't have needed you to save me. I don't ever want you to be hurt like that again, to have to lay in a hospital bed because I couldn't save you." Sadness fills his eyes. "I should have protected you, and I'm sorry."
Naruto paused, staring at the woman in front of him. Her wide lavender eyes filled with kindness he had grown accustomed to seeing over the years, while the small smile that was forming didn't seem to quite reach them.
"Please don't think that way, if you remember that I told you I loved you, you'll remember that I also said you did save me."
"You." Naruto states, stretching his arms above his head taking a deep breath. "You're how I beat Pain. We have to talk a bit about this guy again first though for it to make sense." Naruto again taps on his stomach.
"Kurama?" Hinata questions.
"Mmmmhhh. So, I told you about my mom, how she helped me with the emotional side well my dad was the physical I guess you could say. Thinking you were dead unlocked Kurama's power within me. Jiraiya-sensei always referred to it as the Nine Tails Cloak, it would take over me. I don't fully remember what happened the times I lost control. But after seeing you I just, well, I just lost it. I went further into my transformation than I ever had. I reached eight tails and met him, the fourth Hokage, my dad."
"That doesn't happen anymore, though right?" A worried expression crosses Hinata's face.
"Nope, Kurama and I get along quite well now. We almost didn't though, I almost let him take over. Ya see the seal keeping his power locked inside me was weak, and letting it leak out to almost it's full amount caused my dad to appear. Meeting him was a completely different experience than my mom." Naruto pauses, gauging Hinata's reactions, seeing if needs to go into more detail.
"You were a brat back then. And your father was troublesome" Kurama rolls his eyes at the memories as the surface in Naruto's head.
"I was angry with him, angry for abandoning me, angry for him putting the Nine Tails inside of me. At first I couldn't understand why he did that to his own son."
"He believed in you." Hinata states, realizing the answer Naruto had been given all those years ago.
"Yeah, yeah he did." Naruto shoots her a grin. "And I realized that I could do it, that I could at sixteen become the man I needed to be because I was the son of the Hokage." Naruto launches into the speech of forgiveness and hope his father had given him.
"He would be proud of you Naruto, proud of the man you were and the great one you're still becoming."
"I have you to thank for that my dear." Naruto reaches up, running his fingers through her hair. "You're the brave one in this story, if you hadn't intervened with Pain and told me that you loved me then I don't think I would have gone that far with the Nine Tails. I don't think I would have been able to beat him."
"Oh Naruto!" Hinata launches herself from sitting into his lap. Wrapping both arms around his neck, not expecting it he falls against the wall, laughing.
"You! What am I going to do with you?" Naruto continues to laugh, scooping Hinata up so he can better wrap his arms around her.
"Never stop telling me things like this? Every tiny trivial thing that's happened to you over the years I want to know. And I promise you the same."
"I think I can…" Naruto's words are cut short by a loud pounding on the front door
"Naruto! Uzumaki Naruto, get down here right now!" Sakura's voice sounds muffled through the walls, but the urgency behind it still cuts through.
"Damn it. Sorry. Let me go see what she needs, okay?" Naruto gently moves Hinata from his lap.
Shrugging on his sweatpants he makes his way out the door.
"I just wanted one day with my damn girlfriend. I was gonna take a nap." Hinata hears him complain as he walks down the stairs, she giggles.
"What do you want, Sakura? I'm a little busy" Naruto pulls the door open.
Standing in his doorway is a frantic looking Sakura, her hair is disheveled as if she had been running, cheeks pink to further support Naruto's thoughts. What was really out of place was the man standing behind Sakura, a man Naruto had not expected to see back in the village any time soon, let alone standing on his doorstep. Uchiha Sasuke.
"You could at least put a shirt on when you answer the door, idiot." Sasuke speaks, his tone flat.
"Shut up." Naruto matches his flat tone. "Come in." Stepping aside. "Hinata." Naruto mumbles to Sakura as she eyes the extra set of shoes by his door.
"Hinata?" Sasuke questions not missing a beat.
"Yeah." Naruto smiles. "I'll be right back, Sakura, you know your way around show the ass hole the living room."
"He has a girl…upstairs...in the middle of the day?" Sasuke continues to question Sakura as Naruto bounds up the stairs.
"Yeah well not all of us are loners who go off on missions of self-redemption leaving those we care for at home alone for years on end with no hope of return." Sakura letting the bitterness show.
Naruto not needing to turn around, knowing the frown that Sasuke would be wearing, as he smiles.
Sakura isn't holding any punches when it comes to him now I see. Good. Naruto thinks as he re-enters his bedroom, seeing Hinata already dressing herself.
"Was that?" She asks.
"Yeah, Sakura seems a bit shaken up. I definitely wasn't expecting this."
"Do you know why he came back?" Hinata asks as she buttons her skirt.
"Nope, I doubt he's here to stay." Naruto grabs a clean shirt from his dresser, pulling it over his head. "Let's go." The pair make their way back downstairs.
Sasuke, looking out of place in his traveling clothes, sits at the table as Sakura is perched on the countertop behind him, glaring at the back of his head.
"Sakura, you know that Ino is the one with the mind control, right?" Naruto questions, causing her head to snap up and the glare to shift in his direction
"Hinata." Sasuke nods.
"Sasuke-kun." Hinata returns the gesture. "Naruto, do you have tea?"
"In the cabinet to the left of the refrigerator, and thank you." Naruto places a light kiss on top of her head without thinking twice. The reactions from the two in front of him couldn't be different.
Sakura's glare turns to a sweet smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes to cover the sadness and what Naruto can only call a small amount of jealousy as she continues to look at the back of Sasuke's head. He on the other hand is doing his best to hide the confusion in Naruto's casual act of affection.
"I didn't want to come back." Sasuke starts, eliciting an aggravated sigh from Sakura. "But I've exhausted all my options. I'll get down to it, I don't want to waste time, there is a scroll in one of Orochimaru's hideouts. I believe it contains information about who was working with Danzo and what they were planning. I need an immense amount of chakra to access it, not to mention the traps that are set require multiple people to disengage."
"So, what you're saying is you need Naruto but you know you're stuck with me too." Sakura interrupts.
"As always Sakura, you are the biggest annoyance in my life." Sasuke glances over his shoulder, hiding his face from Naruto, as he turns back around a small blush begins to grow on the pink haired women's cheeks.
"Thank you." Sasuke mummers as Hinata places a glass of tea in front of him, Naruto had not even noticed she had moved from the kitchen.
This must be from the years of practice she told me she had with cooking. Naruto pulls out a chair for her, and himself.
"Have you spoken with Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto asks, sipping his tea.
"No, I understand that I was pardoned but I would suspect some of the villagers still hold a grudge against me. And walking into the Hokages chambers unannounced did not seem like the best idea. I went to your apartment first to find it empty, so I checked the hospital for Sakura."
"I'm glad you came, Sasuke, really." Naruto reassures his old friend. "I'll be happy to help you but we should probably talk to him first."
"When did you actually grow a brain?" Sasuke jokes.