"Sensei?"

The shy little voice gained his razor-sharp attention immediately, Kakashi's gaze lifting from his book to fix on the cracked open bathroom door down the hall. "Yes?"

"Could you—I'm sorry, um, could you please bring me long pants?"

Kakashi turned that over in his head for a moment. He'd laid out soft shorts and an oversized grey sleep shirt. The only long pants Naruto owned were those for her orange jumpsuit. "You sleep in your uniform?"

"N-not—not usually," she admitted, sounding embarrassed, and her voice grew quieter with every subsequent word. "Not when… not when I'm alone."

After the sheer quantity of blind trust the girl had afforded him in the last twenty-four hours, Kakashi was surprised and strangely hurt that she didn't trust him enough to do something as simple as wear shorts around him. But Iruka's words from when they were in her apartment echoed back to him, and he ventured gently, "Do you… want my sweatpants back?" They'd been so cute on her, threatening to drown her if they didn't fall off first.

"Oh, um, yes, that would—that would be perfect, sensei, if you don't mind."

"I don't mind," he rumbled absently, shifting to his feet to retrieve the requested item from his laundry hamper in his bedroom. The bathroom door was shut again by the time he passed by, but it cracked back open when he rapped his knuckles against it, and her hand stuck out to accept the garment. He smiled dumbly down at it, still just so pleased to be having these little domestic moments with her, then came to his senses and gave her what she'd asked for, only for his dumb smile to return at her little chirpy thank you, sensei!

Gods, but how lucky could a guy get? To have the object of his most sincere affections delivered to his doorstep, made his to spoil and protect? Sure, he'd trade it in a heartbeat to make the circumstances of Naruto's move-in disappear, but there was no point in not making the best of it. Her life would be different now, Kakashi would make sure of that. No more shitty apartment, no more ramen for every meal, no more three-in-one soap, no more living in her uniform. He'd clear out that little room for her, make it nice and happy, someplace she wants to be.

He wiped away the sappy look he was sure was on his face, replacing it with his usual indifference as Naruto padded out of the bathroom, what little was exposed of her skin flushed pink with warmth, her hair soaking into her oversized sleeping shirt as she fussed with it, looking frustrated. "Braiding is so hard," she complained, and he could tell she didn't want him to fix it for her, was just making conversation, but he gestured her towards him anyway, patting the couch cushion next to him. She gave him a deeply uncertain look, glancing between his face and the proffered seat like there was a trick she wasn't getting. "You… know how to braid?"

Kakashi shrugged, gestured at his covered eye. "I don't only copy jutsu," he explained shortly, keeping his tone disinterested. It was true—he'd gained a lot of useless skills like that entirely by accident. The braiding had been because of a teammate when he was fairly young, who would braid her hair when she was nervous. He'd caught it with the sharingan a few times, looking over from training with it.

Naruto approached him, but still paused, hesitant, her eyes somewhere near his chin. "You don't… you don't mind?"

He shook his head no, and she sat down at last, handing him a hairbrush with hair ties wrapped around its handle and tossing her wet half-braid over her shoulder. It struck Kakashi quite belatedly that he was being given permission to touch her hair. He'd thought of doing so often. It was really beautiful, shining golden where the light hit it, and satisfyingly thick. She typically wore it in long pigtails, often charmingly crooked and still wet when she arrived for training, but sometimes—evidence suggested when she bathed in the evening rather than the morning—she would braid it, and when it inevitably came undone because she genuinely wasn't very good at doing so, it would be delightfully wavy, so soft looking as it fell nearly to her hips. Maybe she'd let him touch it when it was dry sometime, he hoped distantly as he undid her progress and gently raked his fingers through her hair to detangle it.

She sighed at his touch, her shoulders sagging just a little, and if Kakashi ran his fingers through her blonde locks for a tad longer than was strictly necessary, that wasn't anyone's business but his own. "One braid straight down the back," he asked distractedly, "Or two?"

Naruto half turned to look at him over her shoulder, her smile amused. "You know how to braid braid, huh? Um, it would be more comfortable to sleep on if you could do two braids. If that's not too hard?"

"Course not," Kakashi assured her, using his nails to bisect her hair down the middle, and she shivered at the contact, setting off a rush of dopamine that stilled his fingers for a fraction of a second. Once he'd started, the braids came together quickly and neatly, meticulously even, and it was sort of novel to see her hair lacking its usual crookedness and frizz. "There. Better?"

Naruto twisted in her seat, her hands coming up to feel the braid starting against her the side of her head and trailing to the hair ties that held the structure together. Something desperate and urgent colored her tone as she made eye contact with him, her gaze pleading, and said, "Sensei, you really don't have to be so nice to me. It's already so nice of you to let me stay here… You don't have to braid my hair, or—what's the word? Uh, indulge me. I'm not—you don't have to—" She paused, frustrated as she chewed on her lower lip quite distractingly. "I know I'm pitiful," she concluded after a moment, cheeks flushing as her eyes fell to her lap. "But you don't have to pity me."

Kakashi studied her for a moment, her emotional exhaustion apparent and her body language screaming don't look at me! He thought about how desperately he wanted to make her feel confident, and secure, and beautiful. "I don't do anything I don't want to do," he told her after a long, tense pause. "If what I want to do includes indulging you—" Naruto winced. "—and being nice to you, that's my business."

"It's just—" Naruto cut herself off, studying her nails. It seemed like she wouldn't continue, but Kakashi made a humming, prompting noise, and she huffed and said, "It's just that you weren't nice to me very often before."

Kakashi just looked at her for a long moment, because she was right. He'd mostly been uncharitable towards her, quick to criticize and slow to praise. He'd been trying to keep his distance, plug up leaks in the dam holding back his affection, but she'd smashed straight through when she'd called for him in that interrogation room with tears and trust in her beautiful blue eyes, and now his affection was rushing through him, a flowing river instead of a still lake. "You're right," he acknowledged. "I apologize. I'm not very comfortable with displays of emotion. I didn't want you or your teammates to know how much affection I have for you all. Don't tell the others," he ended on a light tease, earning a smile from her.

The smile faded like mist, though, and her blue eyes grew distant. "What did they… what did they say?" she asked, even as she pulled away from him, as though afraid of his answer.

Kakashi hummed, not letting himself give in to the impulse to pull her back towards him. "They were upset for you, of course. Sakura cried and Sasuke got angry, probably exactly what you expected. I talked Sasuke into taking Sakura to see the counselor Iruka set up for the rest of your peers."

"They all know?" Naruto asked in a small voice, but Kakashi could sense the question was rhetorical. "I'll never… I'll never convince them I'm strong now, will I?"

Those words, said in that morose, dead voice, her blue eyes so dark with disappointment—it finally broke him, and Kakashi was gathering her into his arms before he realized he was moving, pulling her against him and pressing her slight form to his chest as he tucked her head under his chin. "This doesn't make you weak, Naruto," he insisted, far more of his emotion, his passion leaking through than was ideal, and he tightened his grip as her shoulders jerked in a silent sob. "Surviving this and healing from it can only make you stronger, more empathetic, a better person, a better ninja, and a better leader. No one whose opinion is worth hearing is going to think any less of you."

He felt her tears against his neck, then her breath as she let out a shuddering sigh and admitted in a broken whisper, "I wish you didn't know, sensei."

"I'm glad I know," he countered instantly, insistently. "I'm glad I can help you."

She cried for another minute or two, leaving Kakashi to do his best to soothe her, stroking his hand up and down her back. Then she abruptly pulled away, scrubbed her hands over her face, and sounded angry as she said, "I'm—I'm sorry, I'm being such a—such a girl."

Kakashi was thrown for a loop for a moment. "You… are a girl," he observed, confused. "Crying doesn't make you any more or less of one."

Naruto scoffed, getting to her feet and wiping at her eyes as she rounded the coffee table and began fussing with the blankets arranged on the futon. "You know what I mean. I wish I wasn't. A girl, that is…" she murmured as she began to arrange herself on the couch, curled up with her back to Kakashi and her stuffed dog in her arms.

That was… concerning. Kakashi eyed the space near her feet for a moment. There was enough room for him to sit next to her. And yeah, maybe it would be more responsible and honest to interpret her leaving the couch as getting away from him, but it was equally plausible that she was simply getting ready for bed. He let himself do it, turning the lights off and settling in next to her as he turned her words over in his mind. "You want to be a boy?" he asked at length.

Naruto's voice was muffled by her pillow, her face hidden from him, and he resisted the urge to pull her up or roll her over so he could see her expression. "Not… not like that. Not like how Haku wanted to be a girl. It's not really that I want to be a boy, I just wish I wasn't a girl. I wish men didn't treat me like I'm hiding something valuable from them, and I wish drunks didn't say nasty things and try to grab me when I walk through the village at night. I mean—" She giggled, a sad, hysterical little noise, and curled into a tighter ball. "—I'm not even good at it. I'm ugly, and messy, and loud, and rude, and I don't know how to dress or talk like a girl or put on makeup or anything."

Oh, man, Kakashi was not prepared to have this conversation at all, and briefly, he wondered why the hell he'd asked. "You are loud," he admitted, and the girl snorted. "But you aren't ugly. And you can learn those things." He paused. "As for how men and drunks treat you… I'll just beat the shit out of them."

He'd been going for humor and apparently hit the mark, eliciting a much more sincere laugh from the girl curled up next to him. "Thanks, sensei," she simpered sarcastically. There was a short silence, and then her soft voice ventured, "Um, could you stay there? Until I fall asleep?"

Kakashi let himself clasp her ankle through the blanket for a moment, stroking his thumb over her lateral malleolus , and made an affirmative noise. Naruto fell asleep quickly, with her feet tucked against Kakashi's thigh where he sat on the futon with her, reading by the low evening light filtering in from the windows. He stayed longer than he really needed to, soothed by her slow, peaceful breathing, long enough that the light disappeared and he had to put his book away.