- - - - - Fourth Sunshine Story - - - - -
Title : Ishikishougai - Disturbance
Characters : Naruto
Length : 773 words.
Rating : I'll go with PG, because it talks about crushes and fighting but it's not explicit.
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It took him a while to name the emotion he felt when Hinata rubbed the fur on Akamaru's head, or when she said Kiba was being silly and blushed, or when she flicked a drop of juice onto Shino's sunglasses and denied her involvement, or when she clung to Neji's side and wouldn't meet anyone's eyes.
And, like all young boys with crushes, he told himself it was nothing. Something was growing inside him that he didn't like, and it reacted to girls in general (and he was suddenly realizing why Jiraiya told him some of the things he did and told him to stay out of the buildings he did), and that was all it was.
So he was sort of glad to leave and train for three years and think about her only in passing, using that warm fuzzy fondness that he thought about all his Konoha friends with. Sometimes after a hard round of taijutsu that always left him exhausted and his practice partners smug, he'd flop down on the grass and wonder how Lee did it. When he'd been faced with one of those damn word puzzles that were supposed to test his 'mental acuity', whatever that meant, he'd think of Shikamaru. When he'd been pumped all day and could FEEL the calories leaking off him in a very unpleasant way, he'd understood how Chouji could stand to eat all the time. His friends were a part of his life. He liked his friends.
But he didn't know quite how to place Hinata. She was a friend, although she didn't really feel like one. Not really. It wasn't the same thing he felt for Sakura, or for Ino on the rare times that he bickered at her. And it wasn't the same way he was friends with Tenten - as a part of a bigger group collectively labeled 'People I Like'. She ignited an ugly spark of protectiveness, a feeling that made him hate people he normally liked, just because she was near them.
And that bothered him.
And it bothered him that, when he was in one of the inns, he'd seen a girl about Hinata's height with short black hair and his heart had leapt painfully, and then fallen equally painfully when she looked around and had green eyes.
But hey! Jiraiya said that he was thirteen and that made you stupid. He'd grow out of it. He'd get better. Naruto had laughed it off with the fox-faced grin he always used, and was relieved when he hadn't dreamed that night.
And it bothered him that when he was angry at the world, after breaking up a gang or chasing down conmen or some other mundane but maddening assignment that the sennin liked to give him, he would punch walls and lean his head against it and think about Hinata and how she accepted everything just as it was, and ground his teeth and wanted to grab her and shake her and tell her that you can't be like that - you can't just let everything walk over you -
That was when he felt another strange disembodied feeling, aggressive protection directed at a girl he hadn't seen in a year and a half. That bothered him. Friendship wasn't supposed to make you mad or unhappy, it was supposed to make you feel like you belonged and accepted and stuff.
(But Sasuke, his mind whispered. What about Sasuke? He wanted to shake Sasuke every time he thought about him, too. Stupid boy. Idiot boy. My friend.)
He was too young to like girls. Girls were bad. They made you do stupid things. Besides, when he was fourteen, he realized that if he was going to be Hokage it was better not to have anyone like... that. They were an extra weakness that you couldn't afford during wartime. You might as well paint a target on their backs that said 'STAB HERE!'. He admitted that he liked her enough to not want that to happen. But that was all. He was her friend. She was his friend. That was how it was.
But in the back of his mind, something small and snide said that no, it wasn't quite that, was it? It's something different. Because you don't become that self-aware around Sakura. You don't bother trying to find out what makes Tsunade-sama tick (1). You don't start watching your words like that around Ino. You don't get that insane impulse to fight things that touch her when you're near Tenten.
That was what really bothered him.
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(1) All right, so he'd found out that was sake and pachinko and memories.
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Whew. This has been sitting around for a while, but it finally got out. I hate writing Naruto, but it's a great challenge. Also, I'm sorry for the typos like whoa that I had in previous chapters – I need to proofread... And thank you for the reviews, they're really appreciated! Also: I got the title from an online dictionary (shame on me, I know), so it may not be accurate. If it isn't, I'm very sorry.