It had been awkward, sitting next to Naruto in the women's clinic, the only man in a room full mostly of pregnant women. Their expressions had been judgmental when they looked at Kakashi, and pitying when they looked at his girl. He'd known they were likely doing the easy math and assuming he'd knocked her up. But he hadn't minded. He'd sat with her anyway, silently offering himself up as her rock, and when her head had leaned into his shoulder with another miserable sniff, he'd let her rest against him.

Now they were in the patient room, the nurse having taken Naruto's vitals and asked what she was there for before bustling out, promising to send the doctor in shortly. The little blonde looked so diminutive sitting on the examination table, her feet dangling and her shoulders hunched into herself. Kakashi stood next to her, absently stroking his fingers through her hair.

"I'm scared," she confided in a whisper. "I don't like doctors."

Kakashi hummed, wishing he could gather her up in his lap and cradle her. "Nothing bad will happen. I'll be right here. If—"

But they were interrupted by a knock, followed by an immediate entry by a stern older woman with her grey hair pulled back into a severe bun and a disapproving scowl on her face. Naruto was already shrinking against his side before she spoke, never looking up from her clipboard as she drawled sarcastically, "A girl too young for a pelvic exam, here for a pelvic exam, and it's a genin brought in by her jōnin sensei. Somehow I feel like I've seen this one before. Can't you at least learn to wrap it up before you stick it in your technically legal little girl?"

Stunned, Kakashi wasn't sure how to respond, and Naruto was in no better condition, staring at the woman like a deer in the headlights.

Finally, the woman looked up, and her eyes caught first on Kakashi's face, before sliding down to Naruto's. Her eyes widened, and she grimaced. "Sorry," she apologized gruffly. "I know who you are, now that I look at you. I didn't read the name on your chart, but now I know why you're here." Naruto flinched, and the woman sighed, glancing out of the door she'd come in through. "Look, kid, I'm not nice. But I'm the only female doctor on call right now. However, I've got a real nice young colleague, Dr. Kimura. He's good at the bedside manner bullshit. You're gonna have to let somebody swab your cervix. You know what that is? Good. Do you want me looking at it, or Dr. Kimura?"

Naruto's eyes flashed up to his, panicking, and he looked back down at her, wishing he knew the right answer. "Whatever sounds easier," he encouraged her gently.

She searched his face, then jerked her chin in a nod and turned wide eyes on the woman with the clipboard. "The nice one."

"Probably a good choice. I'll go swap patients with him." She turned, but paused, and looked straight through Kakashi into his soul, her gaze so penetrating it rose the hair on the backs of his arms. "Don't do it," she warned, making him shiver, and then she was gone.

"Do what?" Naruto wondered, distracted.

"Don't know," Kakashi lied. Don't put your dick where it doesn't belong, that's what that look had said. "Are you okay?"

"Fine." Naruto hugged herself, and leaned into his side. "Do you think I made the right choice?"

Kakashi shrugged. He truly had no idea. He had no preference between men or women conducting his physicals. He liked them to be quick, and he liked them not to try to make small talk. Maybe the doctor being 'nice' could fill that same kind of need for Naruto. "… Probably," he answered after a stretch of silence.

Luckily, Dr. Kimura turned out to be really quite nice. He waited for Naruto to call him in after knocking, and the first thing he did was introduce himself with a bow and a warm smile. He was handsome, only a little older than Kakashi, with a thick, barely starting to grey beard and kind eyes. "Now, I hear that we've come in to screen for sexually transmitted infections?" At shy Naruto's nod, he offered her a sympathetic smile, and said, "Well, Naruto-kun, I'm sorry we have to do that so young, but we'll get you taken care of, no problem at all. Is this your guardian?"

Naruto glanced up at him, then explained quietly, "Not—not exactly. He's my, um, my jōnin sensei. I live with him."

That patient, warm smile was turned on Kakashi, and his black, cynical heart could not find an ounce of deception in it. "Well, thank you so much for bringing her in to us, sensei." He inclined his head in acknowledgment, but didn't speak, uncomfortable at the man's genuine kindness. "My brother always took me to the doctor, all the way up until I was sixteen. Always easier with a friend, isn't it? Okay, Naruto, has anyone told you what we're going to do today?"

"No, sir." Kakashi could feel her back relaxing under his stilled hand.

"Okay! First, I'm going to swab your throat. Have you ever been tested for the flu? You have? Then that will be easy, no sweat, in and out, won't it? After that, we're gonna take some blood. Have you ever had your blood drawn?"

Naruto shook her head no, tensing back up, and, thoughtlessly, Kakashi resumed his petting. "Hey," he soothed her. "It's not bad. You're Uzumaki Naruto, I watched you plunge a kunai into the back of your hand like it was nothing. A little needle isn't going to hurt you."

She inhaled, her torso expanding under his palm, and exhaled slowly. "Yeah," she agreed softly. "It'll be fine."

"It will be," Dr. Kimura promised warmly. "You shinobi are tough as nails. Every kunoichi I've ever met, so brave, great patients. You're planning to be a great kunoichi, aren't you?"

A shy grin lifted the corners of Naruto's lips, and Kakashi was certain she'd made the right call. "I'm gonna be Hokage someday," she said plainly, as though it were a decided fact, and Dr. Kimura smiled back.

He bowed again, and said, "I'm honored, then, to be your doctor today, Naruto-kun." He straightened up, expression soft and fond. "After the blood draw, I'll step out, and you'll undress from the waist down, put on that gown—" He pointed to the folded blue fabric on the counter. "— and sit on this table, and when I come back in, we'll put your feet up in these holders called stirrups, and I'll do everything I can to conduct a quick, painless cervical swab." His eyes grew serious, and his smile left his face completely for the first time since he'd entered the room. "Now, Naruto, every woman is different. A lot of women don't feel the swab hardly at all, but for some, it can be very painful. There's no way for us to know how it's going to feel for you, but I'll be gentle. And I'll use the smallest speculum we have—that's this nifty little thing that I put inside that helps me see better—and go slow, and tell you everything I'm going to do before I do it. Sound good?"

"Nothing a shinobi of the Leaf can't handle," Naruto announced with no small amount of bravado, even though Kakashi could feel her shaking under his fingers. So brave, so damn cute.

The first swab went fine, and Kakashi averted his eyes as she held her mouth open, as she gagged, roundly refusing to think too hard about her lips and her throat. The doctor praised her, and that was making it easier for her, he could tell. She was fixated on his words, eyes following him around the room with rapt attention. He'd be jealous under any other circumstances, but just then, all he felt was grateful.

The blood draw was a little harder on them both. They ended up having her lay down on her back, and Dr. Kimura asked him to stand on her right, lean over her, and pin her left arm down so she wouldn't jerk. She was shaking badly as he closed one large hand around her wrist and the other around her bicep, holding her down, holding her down, and there was white noise in his ears and his mouth was dry and it had become apparent that he was still intoxicated. He couldn't see anything other than her face, screwed up in fear, and couldn't hear anything other than the little whimper she let out when the needle went in, and this was definitely the weirdest erection he'd ever had in his life.

Lucky for him, Dr. Kimura gave him a physical signal that he was done, tapping Kakashi on the back of the hand as he chirped something upbeat and unintelligible to his rushing ears, and he managed to make himself let go and lean back without drawing any attention to how profoundly he didn't want to. Blue eyes met his, and his hands moved to help her sit up without his permission. "Good job," he told her when he managed to gather himself enough to speak normally, only for the shiver that washed over her at his praise to send him spiraling back into the lurid fantasy that had sprung into his mind, imagining himself tying her down to the exam table, strapping her into the stirrups so she couldn't resist him, and—

"I don't want him to leave!" Naruto sounded panicked, and it finally yanked him all the way back to reality. She was clinging to his sleeve, obviously frightened. "He can't stay here?"

"For your pelvic exam?" Kakashi asked, a little stunned. "Are you sure you want—?"

"He can," Dr. Kimura answered her, ignoring him altogether, but he liked how blatantly the doctor was prioritizing the girl on the exam table. "If he stands by your head, he won't see anything, and you have the right to a chaperone for any procedure in this office. Of course," the doctor acknowledged Kakashi then, looking at him and raising his eyebrows just a tad. "We can't make him stay with you."

Before he could react, Naruto was tugging on his sleeve, begging, "Please?" so prettily that all he could do was nod, even before he fully registered how helpless he was in the face of her big blue eyes. She could have been asking him for literally anything and his response would have been the same.

"Alright, then," Dr. Kimura began. "I'll step out and take your blood sample and throat swab to the lab while you get undressed, and then we'll do the pelvic exam. Is that okay?"

Naruto nodded her head jerkily, and then they were alone. Kakashi watched the girl slide to her feet, toeing off her shoes, thinking about what a roller coaster she'd put him through that day. Offering to be his doll, completely disrupting his lecture, inspiring fury in him so powerful that he was still sporting the headache from it, and now asking him to comfort her through her first pelvic exam. But that's what he'd signed up for, wasn't it? He wanted to be her everything. Evidently, he was making fine progress, if she trusted him so much that he wanted him there while her doctor swabbed her cervix.

The bizarre thought that he'd rather do the swab himself—be her doctor, too—came and went, and luckily, she distracted him by speaking.

"Close your eyes, sensei, I need to get undressed." Naruto's words shook, and her hands and shoulders were shaking, too, and he had no idea how to help her. Wordlessly, hoping to cheer her up, he tugged his hitai-ate down to cover his good eye, and she let out a nervous giggle. He smiled back, though he had no idea if that fact got communicated to the girl at all, and turned away politely, listening to the sound of her clothes rustling and her belt buckle hitting the tile floor. A few moments later, he heard the examination table creak under her slight weight, and she stuttered, "O-okay, sensei, you can turn back around."

Kakashi pushed his hitai-ate up into its usual place as he obeyed, taking her in where she sat looking so small and scared in that blue hospital gown. She was picking at the fabric, her face red, and he found himself returning his hand to her hair, enjoying the way she sighed and leaned into him. "What are you thinking?" he couldn't stop himself from asking, desperate to know all of her thoughts.

"That I have to. Right? I have to, in case I have HPV or something, so I don't get cancer. I've gotta do it."

Kurenai complained at length about her annual pelvic exams. She hated them, and last winter when she'd had her PAP smear, she'd drunkenly confided that she'd nearly hit the doctor who'd conducted it. Maybe women generally hated going to the gynecologist. Didn't seem like there was anything to like, anyway. "It won't be bad," he assured her, wondering if he was lying.

"You don't know that," she argued, sounding tired.

Kakashi hummed. "Do you want me to hit Dr. Kimura if it hurts?"

The girl laughed, and gods, he loved her laugh. It felt like it cleaned out his soul, like pure water washing through dirty fabric. "Noooo… Well, maybe. Depends on how much it hurts."

There was a knock, and at Naruto's permission, the doctor reentered the room with a smile on his face and a headlamp on his forehead, which drove it home for Kakashi that he was about to let another man not only look at his girl naked, but literally look inside her, at a part of her body that Kakashi would most likely never see even if they did begin a sexual relationship.

"Are you ready, Naruto-kun?" She nodded, looking rather grim as the doctor arranged the stirrups for her. "Good. Stand right where you are, sensei. Alright, kiddo, I need you to put your feet in here. And remember that I'm your doctor, and that I will never look at your body with judgment, or as a sexual object. Does that make sense?" She made a little affirmative noise, fists clenching in her gown as she laid back and obeyed, putting first her left foot and then her right into the indicated holds, and Kakashi was glad he was more concerned about the pinch in her brow than the view the doctor was getting. "Good job. Now, just slide down the exam table, until your hips are right on the edge…"

Naruto obeyed, but her eyes scrunched tightly shut, and her hand wrapped around Kakashi's wrist, as though for support. "Like that?" she asked with a trembling lower lip, and he wanted to stroke her face, kiss her forehead, distract her, but he did none of that, just letting her cling to him.

"Yes, that's perfect." Dr. Kimura spoke very softly and gently, like to a spooked horse, as he pulled on examination gloves and applied lubricant to the first finger of his dominant hand. "I'm going to do a quick digital examination, okay? That means I'm going to put one finger inside, very very very gentle, and feel the walls of your vaginal canal for lesions or bumps. Are you ready?"

His girl looked like she wanted to run. She was shaking, and twisting her head back and forth as though looking for something to hide her face in, and it was complete instinct that had Kakashi reach out and lay a cool hand over her eyes and forehead, stilling her and causing her to let out a long, shaky breath. She was so warm under his palm. "It's going to be okay," he heard himself say. "I'm right here. I won't go anywhere."

And—remarkably, because that really shouldn't have helped, and he couldn't fathom why his presence made this easier for her instead of harder—she spoke then, sounding calmer. "I'm ready."

"Okay, good job. Try to relax." Her nails dug into his wrist, and every muscle in her body tensed up like a bow. An awful, pained whining sound was torn from her throat, Kakashi tried and failed to process that he was holding her while another man put his finger inside her, and then it was over, and Kakashi felt as winded and flayed open as she looked. He could feel warm tears against his hand, and his instinct was to fight whatever was hurting her. Dr. Kimura must have seen it on his face, because he caught Kakashi's eye and raised his eyebrows, silently warning him to behave. The doctor shifted his eyes meaningfully down to the girl on table, and he understood the message: this isn't about you, it's about her. "Excellent, Naruto, tough as nails, just like I said. The speculum is going to be next, and it's going to be a little more uncomfortable. If you need to stop or take a break, just say the word. Okay?"

"Okay," Naruto agreed through gritted teeth. "Let's get it over with."

Kakashi watched the doctor duck back under her hospital gown with an affirmative noise. The strangled cry and the way she flinched up the exam table bunched his shoulders into knots, but the doctor didn't react at all, speaking smoothly, "Great job, it's in. Does it still hurt?"

Naruto nodded jerkily, and Kakashi ground out, "She says yes."

"Hmm… It shouldn't, we'll talk about that in a moment. Is it tolerable?"

Another jerky nod. "Yes," Kakashi translated.

"We're almost done, you're being very brave. I'm going to open the speculum—" Naruto cried out, scrabbling at the hand she'd been clutching for support, and Kakashi clumsily laced their fingers together, feeling rather ill. "—very good, almost done, almost done, you're doing great. Now the swab—" Her body went rigid all over, lips parted in a silent scream that came out as a hoarse whine, and then the doctor was sitting back and she was collapsing, shivering and crying as she broke their contact and pushed herself up into a sitting position, wrapping her arms around her legs and burying her face in her knees. "We're done, we're done, all done, I'm sorry that it hurt, I swear that was as gentle as it can be, but now we're all done, and you did wonderfully, Naruto-kun."

But Naruto's breathing was accelerating into a panic attack, taking in gulping, desperate breaths and letting them out on high keening noises, and she showed no signs of stopping, no signs of being soothed. She jerked away when Kakashi tried to touch her, and the doctor stood, movements rapid as he tore off his gloves, cracked open the door, and called out loudly but calmly, "Get me a quick release alprazolam!"

He felt helpless, utterly helpless, watching his girl fall apart, and his hands were shaking. "What—?"

The nurse who had taken Naruto's weight and blood pressure bustled in, a pitying look on her face as she traded the doctor a glass of water and a tiny paper cup for the container the swab had gone into. The doctor wasted no time, pushing Kakashi out of the way as he leaned down towards Naruto's ear and encouraged her, "Take this pill for me, okay, kiddo? It'll make you feel better really fast, I promise, just pick your head up—good job, just like that. I'll hold the glass, just try to swallow—"

Kakashi moved to re-occupy his spot next to her when the doctor moved out of it, but the man held up a firm hand, stopping him. "Give her some space, let her breathe."

"How much did you give her?" He'd been given alprazolam, once, a lifetime ago, at the end of three sleepless days on the front line. It had taken six milligrams to knock him out and prevent him from returning to combat, and it was to date the best sleep he'd ever gotten in his life.

"A full bar—two milligrams. It's too much, but I'm hoping it'll prevent a trauma response about seeing the gynecologist from setting in… Don't look so worried, sensei, her breathing is slowing down already. See?"

It was. Desperate, wheezing breaths turned into harsh inhales and exhales, and her rocking gradually slowed, until she picked her head up, and began wiping at the tears on her red cheeks. "That's good shit," she breathed, sniffling, eyes a little dull, and despite how upsetting this entire situation had been, he couldn't help the upward twitch of his lips at her evaluation of the drug. "Can I get some to go?"

"You'd have to see a psychiatrist. Feeling better?" At Naruto's shy nod, the doctor smiled. "Good, you did really well, I'm sorry it got so scary at the end there, but you're all done. Sensei and I are going to step out into the hall for a quick talk, okay? You get dressed and open the door whenever you're ready. The rest of your water is on the counter if you need it."

Kakashi found himself being escorted by a firm hand on his elbow as soon as Naruto agreed, and the shorter man was looking up at him and speaking low and earnest the moment the door shut behind them. "I've met Naruto before," he began without any prologue, and Kakashi had no time whatsoever to process that before he continued, "About a year and a half ago, she came in to get a birth control implant in her arm. She was jumpy and avoidant, so the moment she left I reported her as at risk for abuse, but apparently nothing came of that." This clearly hurt the doctor, and it hurt Kakashi, too, that even with people looking out for her, Naruto had fallen through the cracks so spectacularly. "I suppose it doesn't matter, what's done is done, but I wanted to thank you for taking her in. I can see how much she trusts you, and I know she needs that. Now, I'm fairly certain she has a condition called vaginismus, do you know what that is?"

He did. He'd even considered adding it to his lecture that morning. "A common sexual disorder that causes involuntary muscle spasms of the pelvic floor and creates pain with penetration."

"Precisely, yes. It's common in victims of sexual abuse. For now, she probably doesn't need to worry about it, unless she is having trouble with using tampons, but I wanted to make sure her caretaker knew that it's very treatable with physical therapy." He turned, taking a few steps towards a rack of pamphlets, and began rapidly pulling them down. "Here, some literature on the subject, you can give it to her. I recommend Balance Physical Therapy on the north side of town when she's ready, ask for Dr. Ishii. And please let Naruto know that if she needs anything, she can come and ask for me here."

"… Okay," Kakashi agreed stiffly, having quite reached the end of his rope in terms of handling input. He accepted the pamphlets and tucked them into his vest, already thinking vaguely that he'd learn how to do the physical therapy exercises and teach them to her himself. "Thank you," he made himself add.

He was saved from any further social interaction by the door pushing open, revealing Naruto redressed and looking quite subdued, her eyes red and her head down. "Sorry," she told them plainly, words slow. "I kind of lost it, huh?"

"Hey, I don't think I'd be very happy if someone stuck a cotton swab in my cervix, either," Kakashi teased her gently, tucking her under his arm and enjoying her tired giggle. "Feel better?"

"Feel great. Never been better in my life. Is this why people drink?"

Kakashi tried not to sound too amused. "Sort of. Are we okay to go?"

"Of course, let me walk you out. Expect news about the results by Monday, alright?"