"Naruto, do you feel like we're being followed?" Soba paused when they had landed on the roof above his apartment.
"I do, but maybe it's just because we're in mission mode still."
"Maybe you're right…"
Soba could not have been less prepared for the sight that awaited her when Naruto opened the door. She had suspected that the man was messy, but not where-is-the-floor, what-color-should-the-counter-actually-be messy. Her horror had obviously been painfully evident on her face because Naruto stopped midway in, unceremoniously pushed her out of the apartment, mumbled wait and closed the door. Soba stood frozen, her nose a centimeter from the wood, and listened to multi-toned thuds and shuffling from the other side. About ten minutes later, the door swung open to reveal a slightly less disastrous apartment. It was small, but then again, he was only one person. Her steps on the wooden floor echoed as she walked into the main hallway. Naruto disappeared momentarily and reentered the room holding a bottle and two cups, a sly grin creeping up his face. Soba left her sandals by the door and padded over to the couch, grabbing a cup from Naruto's outstretched hand. She took a look around at the sparsely decorated home. The only things that she could see that spoke to the man's personality were the not-so-stealthily hidden clothes piles.
"By way of warning, I've told you that Dai is a ridiculous drunk, but um, we're twins. Please don't let me make any poor decisions after you pour the sake in my cup. Naruto, I don't like that smile. I'm serious! Don't let me have too much!" The kunoichi delicately sat down onto his makeshift couch and extended out her arm. "With that said, sake please." Naruto had a devilish grin spreading his face, and Soba was a little scared of where this night could go if she let it. Naruto may actually strain a facial muscle or two...
Outside of the apartment, two barely-coherent 21–year-old men and a confused white dog were vying for a good position in some bushes.
"Dai, your butt is enormous. Move." Kiba shoved his friend sideways so that he could be more hidden. Akamaru was walking between the two fighting man-children, trying to figure out what they were doing. He eventually gave up and sat down, cocking his head to the side. "Akamaru, please hide. You stick out like a sore thumb!" When the three were happily hidden, they settled in for some expert stalking.
"Now we wait." Dai brought his fingertips together, pleased with his plan.
"How are we going to see anything?"
"With our eyes, Kiba. How dumb did the sake make you?"
"Well, Dai, Naruto's apartment is on the TOP floor and we are in a bush. On the ground."
"I see."
"Except you really don't." Kiba gave the other man a conspiratorial glance and they both burst into hysterical laughter. Akamaru barked to remind them that they were supposed to be stealthy. Their giggles had only just subsided when Kiba grabbed Dai's shoulder urgently. "We should climb up and look in the window that way!" Soba's inebriated twin brother's eyes and mouth widened with delight.
"Yes. YES. Akamaru, you stand guard down here in case anyone comes by." The dog barked his assent and the half-baked plan was in action.
The fact that the two ridiculous fiends outside were scaling the side of the building did absolutely nothing for either Naruto or Soba at this point. They were both more than a few cups of sake in, and there was a thick fog separating them from sobriety. Both shinobi had their feet up on the beat-up coffee table, their bodies all but consumed by the blankets on the couch.
"It's really warm in here. Reeeeeally warm. Are you warm?" Soba looked over at Naruto, who had already taken off his jacket. He nodded slowly, all his movements slowed down like he was in molasses. She fidgeted with the knot on her top for more time than she would have cared to admit, then shrugged it off and folded it over the side of the sofa. Her tank top had ridden up around her waist, so she pulled it down quickly, embarrassed. "Ughhh, can we open up a window?"
"Yeah, sure!" Naruto extracted himself from the comfortable mess of the couch and walked over to a window that had a suspicious amount of brown hair sticking out from the bottom of it. He paused to look behind him and caught Soba re-folding her top. His eyes traced her slowly, lingering at the scarring on her collarbone and neck, then the curve of her chest, and pulling his gaze away when he saw her shirt ride up again. It just got a whole lot hotter in here, he thought, reaching out to the window latch.
"He's coming over. He's coming!" Dai was panicking because he and Kiba were hanging off of the windowsill that Naruto was walking over to.
"Where can we go?!" They began shuffling sideways to the neighbor's ledge to escape being seen. Had Naruto had the presence of mind to look out the window and to the left, he would have seen two grown men dangling from a ledge, faces frozen in horror and forehead protectors horribly askew. However, he saw no such thing. He also did not hear two very loud thuds that followed shortly thereafter, and neither did Soba. It was a general non-event for those in the apartment, but a world of pain for the parties involved in the fall.
In the two minutes the blonde had taken to open the kitchen window, the kunoichi on his couch had fallen asleep. Naruto couldn't blame her; he was feeling pretty tired, too. He gently lifted her legs onto the couch and took a moment to just drink in the sight of the world's most confusing woman. Soba was fully relaxed, with her lips parted and long hair fanned out everywhere. Her right hand was gripping her forehead protector tightly, and the left one was flopped onto the floor, reaching for something that wasn't there. The fabric of her undershirt had ridden up again, revealing her toned stomach, and Naruto tried valiantly to ignore the soft skin begging to be touched. To prevent any unnecessarily creepy staring from his end, he quickly covered her with a blanket, turned off the lights and went to bed. In the brief moments before he fell asleep, Soba was all that he thought about; the woman had found her way under his skin and didn't seem like she would be leaving anytime soon.
"Your grip strength is terrible." Kiba chastised Dai from the other side of the bush below Naruto's window. "And they? He? Someone? Just turned out the light. Sexy intentions? We will NEVER KNOW because someone doesn't work out regularly."
The first light of dawn was rising like a mist on the horizon, and the stars were beginning to fade. Dai watched the scene from his back, wondering why on Earth he and Kiba were still lying in the bush.
"Yours is worse. You slipped-" The Grass shinobi yawned loudly, "-first." He had barely finished his sentence before he dozed off. Kiba and Akamaru were already snoring softly somewhere else in the dense foliage.
The sun had almost hit its apex in the sky before Soba had gotten up. She opened her eyes slowly, but then shot up upon realizing she had no idea where she was. A very half-naked Naruto then padded into the living room, yawning. He didn't seem to realize or remember that Soba had gone to sleep on his couch. She jumped up, averting her eyes from the hipbones to which the cotton boxers barely clung, and cleared her throat loudly.
"SOBA! Ahhh, I…hang over…pants?" The blonde tried to cover himself up with his hands, but seemed too uncoordinated to take the next steps towards getting dressed. His eyes were bleary and unfocused, his brow knotted in pain. The brunette standing opposite him didn't seem to be getting along much better, gauging by her vacant-yet-aroused expression. Soba tried her very best to stare at the ceiling, out the window, at the table, or any location that didn't belong to Naruto's lithe frame. She did peek, though, when she thought he wouldn't notice. He did, though. He really did, and the corner of his lips turned up, ever so slightly. Neither of them moved for five minutes afterward because they weren't entirely sure how to exist just yet.
"Shower?" She muttered.
"Shower," was the response.
"Ramen?"
"Ramen," was echoed back, and one muscular arm extended to point to the bathroom.
After they had both showered and changed, with Soba borrowing a less dirty shirt from Naruto's pre-pubescent shirt pile, Naruto led the way to breakfast. While they descended the stairs to the ground floor, they kept hearing odd groans and barks from just around the corner. Not to be deterred from food, they chalked it up to weird people, and kept walking. The smell of Ichiraku was within reach when Soba and Naruto ran into what can only be described as a large green and orange crayon with a bowl cut.
"Good morning, Naruto! Who is this youthful lady with you?" He was much too cheery and much too awake for Team Hangover, who had not spoken on their entire walk for lack of cerebral activity.
"Good morning, Guy-sensei." The blonde pointed in his companion's general direction, "Soba. She's from Hidden Grass. Did mission with her. Having breakfast." Soba nodded with as much gusto as she could manage at that moment.
"Oh-HO! It would seem that Naruto has a lovely lady friend. Ah, the follies of youth. You must have been busy yesterday to be so tired! Ho! What a springtime of your lives it is INDEED!" Soba tried (and failed) to comprehend the apparition in front of her, so that left only Naruto to be horrified at the statement.
"Oh, no, we just, sake. Visiting, you know. Stuff." Waving his arms in a noncommittal way, Naruto walked off. "Bye, Guy-sensei."
"Do not squander your youth, Naruto!" Guy-sensei's wink and thumbs-up pose nearly overwhelmed Soba enough to make her keel over. Recovering, she and Naruto finally stepped into Ichiraku only to find the Rokudaime and his aide, Iruka, seated inside. The blonde screamed inwardly. Soba's eyes shot open because she became painfully aware that she was about to be in the presence of the Hokage while too hung over to function as a human being. She, too, screamed internally with the added realization that she was wearing Naruto's shirt.
Thanks for reading! Comments & constructive criticism are appreciated :)