A/n: Thank you so much for the comments, I'm always so happy to see people I know like and follow the story come back for it even though I'm such a lousy poster xD Enjoy, a little taste of why this story will one day become M rated!
Shisui and Seiko left the inn early in the morning the next day to take a look around town before the sun became unbearable. He didn't know about her but Shisui felt refreshed after a full night of sleep, the mattresses in their inn rooms were better than his back home, it had been a long time since he had slept as comfortably and deeply. Even his face felt better, whatever she had used on him last night had worked wonders for the redness on his skin. To further improve his mood this morning, Shisui had woken to the feeling of deft fingers carding through his hair, playing with the tangled strands until they loosened. He had tightened his grip on her middle and refused to let go until he had had his fill of cuddling her warm soft body.
Now a few hours later, the streets were buzzing despite the early hour, every store and stall they came across was open for business, at some point, they came across an indoor market with fresh produce and stalls selling small paper containers of cut fruit drizzled with chocolate. Seiko was drawn to a stall with an array of red fruits and Shisui, with the whole enthusiasm of a teenage boy when faced with greens, followed along so as to not lose sight of her. She picked through fruit with a critical eye until she settled on some plums, a handful of peaches and even some figs that looked close to being overripe.
After paying for them, she took one fig out of the bag the stall owner, an older lady with a gentle and deeply wrinkled face, had handed her and pulled the small fruit apart, dividing it in two. "Did you know that if a fig has small seeds on the inside it was pollinated by a fig wasp?" she asked, handing him half of the fruit.
Shisui, who had never tried figs before, watched her turn the fruit inside out and eat the red insides and imitated her actions. "I didn't." He didn't know if it was because it was extremely ripe but a taste as sweet as honey exploded on his tongue as he bit into the fruit.
"Wasps have a special relationship with figs," she told him with an amused smile. "You see, figs are actually flowers, they only fill and close when pollinated. And if they have been pollinated by a wasp, the wasp dies inside the fig and its body gets absorbed into it."
Shisui made a face, he had already finished his half of the fruit. "You waited until I tried it to tell me that," he accused her.
"I did," she grinned and offered him another half of a fig. "There isn't really a bug inside anymore. It's safe to eat."
He took the half she offered and then the next and the next until they had devoured the small bag of figs while walking about the market. Closer to midday, when the sun left very little shade behind, they took refuge back inside the inn where the thick clay walls kept the building cool and protected from the sun and found that the Hokage and his guard had had the same idea.
He was surprised when the Hokage asked to have a word with him in private while they were waiting for the day to cool.
"It's fine, I will go up to my room and take a nap," Seiko told him when Shisui looked askance at her.
"You have grown close," Minato noted once they were alone, "I'm glad, that child was never one to get close to anyone."
Shisui would hardly call a nineteen years old woman a child but if this was how Minato saw Seiko then he wanted to laugh at how wrong their clan's council had their relationship pinned. At the same time, he felt a little bothered by how warm the Hokage's tone was and how his face softened when she waved at them before disappearing up the stairs to their floor.
"If I may ask, Hokage-sama, how did you meet?"
"Kushina met her first, I think Seiko must have been around five at the time. Kushina told me that she saw a lot of herself in her, that was why she was first curious to get to know her," Minato smiled in the distance as if he was remembering how tiny Seiko must have been back then. "I'm sure you have noticed the accent in her words, as a child it was much thicker, perhaps she suffered from a speech impediment growing up, I never asked. Children terrorized her because of it."
Shisui tried to imagine the woman he now knew as a small child, her pale face made paler by fear, her black eyes wide and full of tears. He scowled, it made him angry.
"Kushina, too, was bullied relentlessly as a child, I think that for her to see it happen right in front of her brought all of her bad childhood memories back to the surface, she wanted to spare Seiko the same loneliness that she had felt," Minato paused and gave Shisui an amused smile.
"Not that I think Seiko needed someone to protect her from anything. Don't let her mature and polite demeanour fool you, she wasn't afraid to defend herself as a child, viciously if needed, and if anyone tried to put their hands on her, they always ended up regretting it."
Now he really wished he had met her when they were both younger.
"The months after Naruto's birth were the hardest for both of us. I'm not proud to say that I relied on her a lot. She was just a child but she took care of him better than I did," he confessed with an uncomfortable smile, "no matter what I do, I will never be able to make up for the work I put on her shoulders. Continue to put on her shoulders even now."
"I don't think she sees taking care of Naruto as work."
"She doesn't, but it shouldn't have been her responsibility to make sure he was fed and taken care of. She is the closest thing to a mother that he knows. If something is troubling him, she is still the one he runs to and that is my fault, for not being there from the beginning and for continuing to not have the time to spend with him like he wants."
Shisui didn't blame him for falling apart after his wife died, if anyone could talk at length about the madness that resulted from the death of a loved one it was his clan. He couldn't condone putting a child through the process of raising a baby by herself but he understood that Minato hadn't done so intentionally.
"But I digress, this is not why I asked to speak with you," Minato shook his head, "I will be in and out of the Kazekage's office for the next few days so I would like you to keep an eye on Seiko while we are here."
Shisui tensed. "Should I expect trouble?"
"Not on purpose but it doesn't hurt to be careful," Minato got a troubled look on his face, "don't leave her alone with the child we saw today."
When he climbed the stairs to go back to Seiko's room (their room?), his mind was still ruminating over Minato's words.
Seiko was lying on top of the bed when he walked into her room, her back to the door. He closed the door behind him as soundlessly as he could. She didn't stir and as he approached the bed he realised that, true to her word, she had indeed settled in for a nap.
He sat next to her and watched her breathe for a moment. She must have been around eleven when Naruto was born, he couldn't imagine himself taking care of a baby at that age. Like any other genin he had had babysitting jobs but the kids were usually small children, not babies, and they were still accompanied by their sensei who could keep an eye on them. How strange was it that at eleven he had been more capable of ending a life than taking care of one?
Was this where her motherly instincts came from, or had Naruto been fine with her because she had been a responsible and mature child, to begin with?
As if feeling his gaze, she began to stir, her long lashes fluttered lazily. She made a little whining noise as she stretched across the luxurious bed. "You're back," she mumbled with some difficulty as a yawn tried to escape at the same time. "What time is it?"
"Still early," he pushed a stray lock of silky black hair away from her face and leaned down to press his lips to her cheek. "I heard there's going to be a festival until the exams are over."
Seiko turned her head towards him and closed her eyes. "They want to take advantage of the visitors to sell their wares. We should go, I wanted to buy some puppets to bring back to Konoha."
"Puppets?"
"I heard some of the genin here use them to practice chakra control and concentration," she smiled and wiggled her fingers, "I know of at least one brat that will find it more engaging than trying to stick a leaf to his forehead."
She moved a little and relaxed back into the bed, rubbing her cheek against her pillow. "Later, though, back to sleep now," her hands grabbed blindly at his and pulled him playfully. "Come nap with me."
Not one to refuse freely given cuddles, Shisui slipped his sandals off and climbed over Seiko to the other side of the bed to settle against her back.
"What did Minato want?" she asked him.
"Not much, he's going to be busy until the tournament so he asked me to keep an eye on you," he murmured against her shoulder. She didn't quite smell the same, which led him to believe that the berry scent he normally noticed on her skin and hair must be from what she used to shower back home. Due to the very light, clean scent of the products the inn provided, the natural warm scent of her skin came through more easily. "We talked a little about you and Kushina-san."
"Gossiping about me behind my back?"
He threw an arm around her middle and squeezed her body to his. "I don't think of it as gossip. I know it hurts to talk about her and I don't want to see you cry again."
"I see her sometimes when I look at Naruto," Seiko confessed. "He might have inherited his father's hair and eye colour but his face and personality are all Kushina," she giggled quietly to herself, "they have the same verbal tic, too."
She grew quiet and the space between them swelled with a heavy emotion.
"I'm sorry, I know it's been eight years, I should be able to talk about her without breaking down."
She turned on the bed and Shisui was glad to see that at least she wasn't crying this time, but there was still a deep melancholy in her inky black eyes and a frown on her lips.
Shisui kissed the little furrow between her brows until it relaxed into the gentle expression he was so fond of. "There is no expiration date on grief. You can take however long you need. When you wish to talk about anything, I will be here."
"Sometimes I forget you are only sixteen," she commented with a pained grimace, much to Shisui's amusement.
That was the problem with people born around the same time as he and her, they were born in the middle of a war and forced to grow too quickly. He had caught but a few months of it back when he was a genin but the shock of losing his friend, awakening the mangekyou, becoming jōnin at age 11 and going on harsher missions, he had barely had the time to be a child.
"Is my age the reason why you never kiss me first?" he asked her. He had noticed before that while she often guided their kisses, he would be the one to ask for them. She also only ever put her hands on him to comfort him and cuddle him.
"For there not to be an imbalance of power between us, it is better if I, as the older person in the relationship, allow you to set the pace for what you're comfortable doing and when," Seiko explained, her tone calm but also firm, "I won't do anything you don't ask for."
Shisui felt affection for her swell in his chest. He had not been afraid of someone trying to take advantage of his inexperience before, it had not been something he had considered. Perhaps he should have, as she said, he was sixteen and she hadn't been the oldest person the council had tried to saddle him with. He tried not to think about what could have happened had someone tried to touch him in a way he wasn't comfortable with.
He would rather think of the possibilities this new information offered him.
Shisui leaned over her, a forearm keeping him from falling, their faces a scant few inches apart. When she didn't flinch or turn her face away, he closed his eyes and lowered his lips to hers. He had been waiting so patiently for her to take the kissing a little further, not knowing that she never would unless he gave her the go-ahead.
So he would, in his own clumsy and inexperienced way.
She responded to the kiss in the same gentle unassuming way she normally did, allowing him to lead with only a little guidance from her hands on his cheeks. When he parted his lips to allow his tongue to hesitantly brush across her bottom lip, she immediately responded in kind, brushing her own tongue across his lips. Her movement, however, unlike his, was purposeful; she used the tip of her tongue to tease the sensitive seam of his lips, parting them through the electrifying sensation alone. Shisui shuddered and pressed closer, meeting her tongue with his. He didn't know how he was supposed to move, how much was too much, but he didn't care, the heavy heat that spread low in his abdomen at each swipe of her tongue didn't leave room for any other thought.
She let him have his fill for a while before turning her face, breaking the kiss.
"Let me show you," she murmured against his wet lips, "relax your mouth."
He did as she asked without a second thought and lowered his head when prompted by a hand tangled in his hair.
"Slowly," she whispered, "there is no rush," the tip of her tongue touched his lips, catching the mix of their saliva there before slipping inside. She knew every sensitive spot inside his mouth and she made sure to touch every single one with her tongue, lightly, teasingly. Only when she felt that he had been thoroughly taught of every way in which she could make his mouth water did she deign to pay his tongue attention. She circled it, stroked the length of it and finally coaxed him into following her movements.
As their tongues danced inside his mouth, Shisui lost himself to the sensual sensations. A small part of his brain was telling him that he was growing aroused and if he didn't stop soon Seiko was going to see it, or worse, feel it. This part was ignored and quickly drowned by how good everything felt, the fire in his belly, her hand on his hair that tugged gently whenever he did something she liked, the taste of her on his tongue.
It was all too much and at the same time not enough.
When Seiko pulled from him and parted their lips, Shisui groaned and dropped back on the bed, hiding his red face on his pillow.
"I didn't expect that to feel so good," he confessed with a breathless laugh.
"If it didn't, there wouldn't be so many people doing it," Seiko joked just as breathlessly, she turned to face him but he refused to relinquish his grip on the pillow. "Are you okay? Was it too much?" she ran a hand soothingly through his hair.
When he had rolled on his stomach, he had felt just how affected he had become, he wasn't going to show her that but he did lift his head to flash her an embarrassed grin. "I think I liked it a little too much."
The realisation of what was happening to him dawned on her. "It's a normal reaction, the body often takes kissing as a prelude to sex and acts accordingly."
That didn't make it any less embarrassing.
"Do you need me to step outside?" she asked gesturing to the door.
"No, I'm alright, it will go away sooner or later."
She turned on her side away from him to give him some modicum of privacy and relaxed into the bed, a few minutes later her breathing had settled into a slow steady pattern. He was a little offended that the thought of how aroused he was wasn't enough to make her a little more alert to him. He knew that she must trust him enough to know he wouldn't act on it while she had her guard down but he was still a man, sixteen or not.
He huffed and reached for her, his fingers closed around a long lock of her black hair so silky it slipped through his fingers like water. "I will make you regret it one day, just wait," he promised before he, like her, settled in to wile away the hours until the sun dropped lower into the sky.
