Naruto could tell that Haruno-san—a pretty, motherly woman with hair the same color as Sakura's—was initially uncertain about her daughter bringing the village jinchūriki and the last Uchiha into their home, but she was nice enough about not showing that too obviously. The first thing she'd said directly to Naruto was, "Oh, my, you do have a lot of hair, don't you?" She did, to be fair. It reached past her waist when it was straight down, and it was heavy when it was wet, or when it was hot outside. She wasn't sure how to respond, but then the woman turned to Sasuke and asked, "Are you sure you don't need a haircut as well, young man?" which made Naruto laugh and decide she liked her.
Truthfully, Naruto wasn't completely sure why the boy was there, looking grumpy where he was leaning against the counter. It was clearly making Sakura happy, though, and she was being so nice to Naruto, so she didn't question anything as she was sat down on a kitchen chair and asked a series of questions she didn't understand while her braid was carefully undone. Where do you part your hair? How much do you want off? Do you want layers, bangs?
"I've never had a haircut," she repeated for Haruno-san's benefit, and after that, the woman was a bit warmer and less stiff. She was very patient as she discussed Naruto's options. She recommended against layers, since Naruto liked to wear her hair in braids and they would be messier with layers, and against real bangs, since they could be hard to style and Naruto had no relevant skills for doing so, but she was talked into cutting some of the hair closest to her face shorter, to about her chin, to frame her face when the rest was pulled back.
"How long do you want it?"
Naruto blinked owlishly the pretty older woman. "I… I have never once in my life thought about that," she admitted. "Um, Sakura?"
Her teammate moved behind her, and she felt hands in her hair. "Maybe just cut off the damaged bit," she suggested to her mother. "Six inches or so. That'll bring it about to a little higher than the bottom of your ribcage. Sound good?"
"I trust you," she answered instantly, and Sakura was smiling when she re-entered her line of sight.
Sasuke was told to wet down Naruto's hair with a spray bottle of water while Sakura was told to help her mother gather up some supplies, and the older woman seemingly did not pick up on Sasuke's utter disdain for the task. There was an awkward silence as they were left alone with nothing but an anxious look from Sakura over her shoulder.
"Teme, you don't have to—" she began to let him off the hook as she turned to look at her teammate, but he interrupted her by spraying her directly in the face, causing her to cough and sputter. "Hey!"
"Shut up, dobe," he said, haughty and superior, starting in on spraying her hair.
It was a weird sensation, as it became wet slowly and from the top down, and she was briefly too distracted by wiping the water from her face to answer him. Naruto didn't know exactly what she wanted to say or how she wanted to say it, but that had never stopped her before. "Sasuke, you don't have to treat me different, or be nice to me, or anything, just because you found out I was being—" She cut herself off that time, having rarely tried to put words to what had happened to her. Molested? Abused? They were ugly words, and they made her flinch.
There was no pause to Sasuke's movements in the brief silence that followed, and in a move so bizarre that Naruto nearly looked over her shoulder to make sure it was still the teme behind her, she felt fingers running through her hair, parting it to better soak it through. "I know," he answered after a moment, words quiet. There was more silence, then, "I've been too caught up in myself to realize I have precious people around me again."
She was touched, so much so her eyes burned, and she failed to collect herself well enough to speak before Sakura and her mother returned from gathering combs and scissors and a hair dryer and various bottles. Sasuke didn't stop his assigned task until it was taken over by the expert, who began to comb her hair through at the same time, and he didn't re-enter her field of view as the haircut began in earnest.
The first cut sent a shiver of anxiety up her spine. She stiffened, and maybe Haruno-san picked up on that, because she began speaking at length about Naruto's hair. "So dry," she was sighing by the time her shoulders began to unknot. "It would be so beautiful if we deep conditioned it. Do you need to be home at a specific time?"
She shook her head, and Sasuke's impassive voice stated, "I'll walk her home if it gets dark."
To which Naruto responded thoughtlessly, "So that's why you're here," which made Sakura snort. Then, to Haruno-san, "I don't think I have a curfew. I haven't asked."
"Sakura was telling me your living arrangements have changed recently," the woman said, and her voice took on that soft quality she'd been hearing a lot lately that erased any doubt from Naruto's mind that she knew exactly why the move had taken place. "Hatake-san is a fine young man, but I'll eat my hat if he knows the first thing about raising a young lady." Was sensei raising her? That didn't sound right. "You come ask me if you need anything, alright, sweetie?"
Naruto mumbled an affirmative, her eyes burning, and Sakura patted her knee as the sound of hair being cut dominated the kitchen.
…
A little over half an hour later, Naruto and her teammates were sitting on the floor in Sakura's room, and her hair was bundled up in a towel on her head, coated in a thick substance that Haruno-san had promised would "rescue" her hair if left on for an hour, though from what, Naruto had no idea. The whole situation was incredibly awkward, all the more so for Sasuke's voluntary inclusion in what even Naruto was pretty sure should have been a female bonding activity. But he was being halfway agreeable, if quiet, so she was deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth, and Sakura clearly had the same mindset.
"I heard that Asuma-sensei and Kurenai-sensei are seeing each other," the pink-haired girl was saying in a conspiratorial tone, and Naruto was delighted to realize she was at last being included in the feminine ritual of gossiping, so much so she got nervous and stuttered a little trying to figure out how to participate.
"O-oh, um, that—wow, Sakura, who told you that?" she tried, and was rewarded with an encouraging smile.
"Ino said Tenten said that Lee saw Kurenai leaving Asuma's apartment on his daily 5am sprint around the village," she gushed. "Scandalous, isn't it?" Naruto nodded enthusiastically, but then a silence she didn't understand fell over them, as Sakura looked between her and Sasuke expectantly. Lost, she turned to him, and he shrugged, looking uncomfortable and out of place. Sakura's smile wavered, but came back stronger as she straightened her back and said magnanimously, "Alright, alright, I know you guys aren't good at this. I told you some gossip, now you're supposed to tell me some. Make sense?"
"An exchange of information concerning the personal lives of our acquaintances?" Sasuke summarized in his usual disinterested way, earning a delighted nod from the other girl. He hummed, leaning back on his hands and looking up at the ceiling. "I… saw Kiba give Hinata flowers last week."
"Ooooh!" Sakura exclaimed, clapping her hands down onto her knees. "See, that's a good piece of gossip, Sasuke! How did she react?"
The boy looked uncomfortable, but there was something indulgent in the tilt of his mouth as he answered her. "How you'd expect. Blushed like she was going to have an aneurysm and ran away. But she took the flowers, and Kiba looked pretty pleased with himself."
Naruto was wracking her brain for anything that resembled gossip. It was hard, because nobody told her anything, and it's not like she's even been around anybody other than sensei lately—
"Oh my gods," Naruto gasped, covering her mouth with her hands. "I forgot, how could I have possibly forgotten?" Seeing that she had the other two's rapt attention, she lowered her hands, leaned in, and whispered, "I saw sensei's face."
"No fair!" Sakura cried, though she was nearly bouncing with excitement. Sasuke's reaction wasn't as expressive, but he abandoned his disinterested posture, leaning forward and giving Naruto his undivided attention. "Does he have fish lips?"
"Buck teeth?" Sasuke demanded.
Naruto flushed to the roots of her hair. "No, he—well, he's really very handsome. And he has a tiny dimple on the left side when he smiles, and his scar goes down almost to here," she said, feeling a little guilty for revealing the man's secrets as she gestured at her cheek, level with her lips. But the sincerely fascinated expressions on the other teens' faces spurred her on. "And I saw him shirtless," she added, causing Sakura's jaw to drop and Sasuke's eyes to widen minutely. "He's got a lot of scars, most of them look like cuts, but there's a big one on the back of his shoulder—"
"Why are you seeing each other half naked?" Sasuke demanded, bemused, and Sakura started to laugh as Naruto stammered over her response.
"I wasn't—he wasn't—it wasn't like that! We run into each other in the hallway at night sometimes, and I guess he sleeps without a shirt on. And he takes his mask down when we eat together, he says it would be stupid to try to hide it from a roommate. Sometimes he even puts his hair back with a headband, it's so weird—"
"Naruto," Sakura groaned, "Good gods, I have so much to teach you, you're lingering over the wrong parts! Ino would be hitting you by now. This is important! Does he have abs? Is he hot?"
Feeling her blush going nuclear, Naruto looked helplessly over at Sasuke, who was a little pink himself and looked sincerely interested. Maybe the teme likes boys? she thought distantly as she scrambled for an answer. It would explain a lot. She buried her face in her hands, and spoke into her palms. "I don't know! I don't know, I don't ever think about things like that, I don't know if—"
Sakura interrupted her, resolute in getting to the heart of the matter. "Did seeing sensei shirtless make your stomach feel twisted up, and your face hot?"
See, that was a straightforward question, and even if she didn't necessarily want to answer, she could. "Yes," she admitted, mortified, and set Sakura squealing.
"Gods, Ino is going to lose her mind. Are you any good at drawing? Because if you can't describe it well enough, she'll try to make you draw it."
"Please no," Naruto begged into her palms.
Sasuke cleared his throat, and ventured thoughtfully, "You should take a photo. Of his face, I mean. Infinite blackmail, plus the power it would give you over everyone who wants to see it."
She was shaking her head so hard her towel nearly came undone before he was even finished speaking, and her hands flew up to hold it in place. "No! No, he's been incredible to me, he's so… would you believe me if I said sweet? He painted the spare bedroom in his apartment for me, and set everything up, and it's all orange and blue and it's so pretty, and probably the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me. And he braids my hair every day, and he's been tucking me into bed and sitting with me if I have trouble sleeping, and—"
Naruto realized she was oversharing and shut up all at once, clapping her hands over her mouth as though she could take her words back, but judging by the positively stunned expressions on his teammates' faces, there was no undoing the damage. Sasuke looked more confused than Naruto had ever seen him, blinking rapidly as he visibly tried to reconcile his view of the world with this new information. "You're still—you're still talking about sensei, right? Hatake Kakashi?"
And despite herself, and despite how awful it felt not to protect the man's secrets, the truth spilled out of her. "He's so sweet to me, and kind," she breathed. "I didn't even think he liked me before, but he's so different at home. He makes me feel so safe."
Sakura sat back, with an odd little, "Huh," as she stared at Naruto as though she'd done a particularly fascinating magic trick and she wanted to know how it worked. "Who knew that sensei had a heart?"
Naruto leaned in, whispering urgently, "Sometimes, I worry he's been replaced, you know? Like the real sensei has been kidnapped."
Sasuke snorted. "Don't be stupid, dobe. He's clearly got a soft spot for you because of your close resemblance in personality and appearance to a golden retriever."
Naruto shoved him, and then they were wrestling, and Sakura was cheering for her to win, and by the time she tapped out because the towel had come undone, they were all laughing.
…
Kakashi knew he liked Naruto's hair. It was exactly the same vibrant golden yellow as Minato's, and long and thick, and he liked to touch it, liked to see it move with her, liked it when she let her braids down and it took on that playful wavy texture. So he hadn't seen any room for improvement, and therefore was not at all prepared when it manifested in his apartment.
He seldom saw her with her hair down, but it was down when Naruto came home, and he could barely hear Sasuke bidding them a good night for how intensely his gaze was drawn to her. It was a good deal shorter, though still long, falling to about her mid-back, but what was pulling him in was how soft and shiny it looked, like a sheet of gold silk spilling down her back... And it framed her lovely face so prettily, made her look alluring and inviting, drawing attention to her delicate cheek bones, and, oh, man, she was definitely talking to him, he should probably listen.
"What?" he asked, throat rather dry.
She huffed, and put her hands in her hips. "I said, hi, sensei, sorry I'm home late, Haruno-san made dinner, I hope you didn't wait up. And then I said, Sasuke walked me home, thanks again, teme. After that I said, Sakura gave me a bunch of funny stuff for my hair, I don't know what half of it's for. And then I said hey sensei, what are you looking at? Does my hair look funny? That's what you're looking at, isn't it? Then I stared at you for a while, and just now I said, you look like you want to touch my hair, sensei, you can if you want to."
He blinked at her recitation, which was impressively covered in the space of one breath, and then shook his head, trying and failing to straighten out his thoughts. "I can… You'd let me touch your hair?"
She shrugged, looking at him with something like concern in her eye and the downward tilt of her lip. "Well, sure, you touch it all the time."
"But that's… practical, and this would be…"
She ran her fingers through it, brushed it behind her ear, and Kakashi was bewitched, wrapped, transfixed. "It really is very soft, sensei, I can't stop touching it either." Naruto stepped closer, and it felt dangerous, and closer, within arms reach, and his fingers twitched. She turned, and the golden cascade of her beautiful hair was displayed to him, and it was so smooth between his fingers that the fact that he shouldn't have been touching it slipped his mind.
"I had no idea I could be so easily distracted by something shiny," he breathed, and Naruto laughed, and he realized all at once that he'd missed her while they were apart. How strange, to miss someone who was still alive.
"Did you eat?" she asked as she turned around, smiling up at him as he tried desperately to remind himself genin, not wife. He shook his head, and she bounced a little on her toes, moving past him into the kitchen, pulling out a pan and setting it on the stove before he could say a word.
Kakashi's fingers were tingling. "Didn't you say you'd eaten dinner?" His brain was moving slow, way too slow. He was a shinobi, for fuck's sake, a pretty girl's hair being shiny and soft and smelling like citrus shouldn't lower his IQ this much. "You don't have to cook just for me."
Naruto roundly ignored him, and damn if he didn't find that charming. "Anyway, they said it's conditioner that makes it so nice, and they said there's all different kinds, leavings, deeps, dailies. They even said you can use egg, but wouldn't it just cook when you got under the hot water? Anyway, Sakura said my soap is a travesty, even though it says conditioner right on it, and she lent me some replacements." She was pulling vegetables from the fridge, then chopping them while she fried tofu. "It was kind of fun, but weird. I think Sakura is trying to teach me how to be a girl, and I guess it's about time someone did. Oh, and the teme stayed the whole time, isn't that so strange? He even shared gossip when Sakura told him to, apparently he saw Kiba giving Hinata flowers? I don't really get why he was hanging out with us, but it was really fun."
That… was interesting. Sasuke had so studiously avoided setting down roots, to the point Kakashi sometimes worried he may go rogue someday. It was good news, so why was it making him feel jealous? He should have been delighted, not worried about what type of roots the boy wanted to put down with his other student. "I'm glad you had fun."
"Do I have a curfew?" she asked casually over the hissing of vegetables hitting hot oil, and Kakashi had no idea how to answer. Probably he should say yes, and say some reasonable time that was practical and hands-off, like eleven. But he had to look it in the eye that imposing a rule on her about when she came home kind of turned him on. He was going to hell, he could feel it in his bones.
"Nine," he heard himself say. "Unless you tell me where you're going and when to expect you."
Naruto smiled down at her work, stirring steadily, and her voice was quiet and pleased as she remarked, "It's nice to know someone cares if I come home."