Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
REVISED 5/30/2015
All posted chapters have been revised. This basically involved cleaned up typos, rewording a little dialogue, fixing a messed up name and correcting a continuity error. While there are very likely still errors because I'm not perfect, these should be a little cleaner. I have redone all that was already posted in order to get myself back in the game of writing. I know it's been getting close to a year now since I've last updated, but I am working on it. Life happened and I'm sorry but I'm back. And if it makes you feel better, my little sister is going to be badgering me to update and since I live with this person and I'll want her off my back, it is likely that you will get more frequent updates now.
No Thanks Necessary
Chapter 11
Naruto Uzumaki sat alone in his bedroom in the Nara home. Kiba wasn't there. He'd woken up with a nightmare not too long ago and had snuck to his sister's room, thinking Naruto was asleep.
And the blonde had been until Kiba had kicked out hard just as he woke up, battling some demon unseen but within his own mind.
Naruto sat up slowly as the door closed and wrapped his arms around his legs.
He wondered what that was like. What was it like to wake up in the middle of the night and not be alone? What was it like to be scared and have someone to run to? Someone to whisper that everything was fine? Someone to ruffle their hands through your hair and check for monsters in the closet even though both of you knew that there was really anything there, but it made you feel better nonetheless? What was it like?
He rested his chin against his knees, face scrunched in concentration.
He had no idea.
Maybe it had been the ideas floating around before he drifted back off to sleep, or the influence of Kiba's own nightmare, but soon enough Naruto was trashing under his covers, mumbling to people unseen.
But for the first time in his life, when Naruto jolted awake he wasn't alone.
The blonde found himself bundled into the lap of Shikaku Nara, himself sitting against the wall, cross-legged, eyes dropping with sleep, but concern still evident within.
The chill of the dream was chased away by the warmth of the arms wrapped around him. The fear calmed by the steadiness of the heartbeat he could hear in the chest his own head rested against.
And Naruto looked up at the man who was kind, even while complaining. The man who had fought for him in his apartment. The man who winked at him over breakfast in the morning when Naruto caught himself beginning to shout and stopped and had been so proud of himself because Shikamaru's mom had been trying to teach him inside rules. The man who had never looked at him like that. The man who called him by his name!
Shikamaru is lucky, Naruto thought.
I want a dad, was the next thought.
Then Naruto started crying, sobbing really. Completely out of proportion to the dream that he had just experienced, because it wasn't the dream that was the cause of his tears. Curling into the broad chest next to him, clutching fingers grasping on the tattered t-shirt that the man had worn to bed, clinging on for dear life as the tide that had been out his entire childhood came rushing in, Naruto wept for what was not.
Why him?
Why did both of his parents have to die?
Why did he have to be alone?
Why did he have to be alone while other kids had parents and siblings and clans and friends…?
Why did Shikamaru get a dad who wakes up in the middle of the night to a child having a bad dream and got up and cradled the child to his chest even though it wasn't his own child?
Why did Shikamaru complain about his family and parents all the time when they did things like this?
Why would anyone complain about there being someone there in the middle of the night?
Why?
Naruto cried and cried and cried. A life of injustice pouring out into one man's nightshirt.
Always having watched from afar, never really knowing what it was like, Naruto was for the first time feeling what it meant to be comforted. To feel protected and safe even from his own mind. Naruto had never before known exactly what it was that he was missing, only that it was something.
But now he knew. The memory of this seemingly inconsequential night would stay with him for the rest of his life. Because now he knew what the caring arms of a parent felt like, and knowing that this might be the only time that he might never feel this again, that he would soon be back all alone in his empty apartment, was more than he could bare.
It was something that he never wanted to let go of and would cling to for as long as he could.
And so he cried. He cried until his body had no more strength and then he slumbered, hand still clenching tight at the man who dared to care.
Shikaku, for the life of him, couldn't fathom where the sudden depression had come from. He knew it was more than the delayed reaction of a child waking from a nightmare, it was deeper than that. Crying from fear is primal, the body does it of its own accord. But the tears that raced down Naruto's flushed cheeks were something else. He was mourning. And Shikaku couldn't figure out why.
Really there were only two things that could baffle the enviable mind of Shikaku Nara: women and children. And right now he had a house full of both of them.
Heaving a heavy sigh, noticing the grimace and small moan released by his captor at the sudden motion and studied tear-stained cheeks.
As gracefully as he was able, Shikaku rose to his feet, one arm around the boy's shoulders, the other tucked under his knees. Holding the child close to his chest Shikaku was thrown by the realization of just how small Naruto was, that even Shikamaru, who thought taking the time to go to the table was too much effort, weighed more than the boy. A protective urge rose up in him, the strongest yet he had experienced for the blonde and that included the night of the attack on him at his apartment. Something would have to be done to ensure the boy's health, he was grossly undersized for his age. Yoshino and he could work out what to do about that tomorrow.
For now, he had a scared little boy to take care of.
He hadn't had to do this for years for Shikamaru, who had long since decided that running to mommy and daddy with a nightmare was too much trouble to go through.
Cradling the village outcast to his chest, Shikaku carried the boy into his bedroom, Yoshino slightly awake and already pulling back covers, ready to cuddle the little boy in his exhausted sleep. She tossed one arm around the young boy who instinctively moved into the embrace.
Neither noticed the dark eyes watching from the slit of an open door in the hallway.