Naruto looked at the festival like a revelation, like it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, like she was lucky to be there, under the paper lanterns and the twinkling lights. It made Kakashi see it through new eyes, the colors cast by the paper lanterns, the way the ones shaped like koi glowed and fluttered in the breeze, the endless rows of bright stands and the menagerie of pleasant smells, all the beautiful clothing…
Maybe it was wonderful, worthy of Naruto's sweetly upturned face and her wide, awed eyes, her parted lips. There was a moment in which his vision blurred, and instead of a jōnin sensei there with his genin, he was six, between Minato and his wife, in the green yukata Kushina had picked out for him, her lip gloss tacky where it was still drying on his forehead—
Then Sakura was laughing, and it brought him back to the present. He smiled down at her, having no idea what she'd said to send Naruto into a fit of giggling while Sasuke glared her down. His other genin were well dressed for the occasion, Sakura in a yukata just a shade lighter than her hair and Sasuke in a kimono Kakashi recognized, black with the Uchiha fan on the back. But they paled in comparison to his girl, so bewitchingly delicate and alluring, so profoundly and untouchably beautiful, the sweetest forbidden fruit in her stunning blue kimono. She looked so pure and unsullied in it, and Kakashi's hands felt filthy for how badly they wanted to touch her, to crumple and unwrap her layers of silk and muss up her hair—
"I'm not scared," Sasuke insisted, scowling fiercely. "I'm just not a baby who wants to play festival games."
"You just know I'm gonna kick your ass from here 'til Tuesday, teme," Naruto shot back, turning to Kakashi. "Gimme my wallet, sensei, I have an ass to kick."
He had set her wallet on the kitchen table when she wasn't looking, and instead secreted quite a stash of small bills into the fold of his obi, fully intending to treat his students since he was the one who insisted they attend the festival in the first place. She didn't seem to notice this discrepancy, though, just accepting the two proffered bills and hauling Sasuke away bodily towards one of the stands, Sakura and Kakashi gamely following behind.
Shinobi generally weren't permitted to compete for prizes, since it would be unfair to the civilians and stand runners both, but they were allowed to play the games, and most stands had a chalkboard posted where the name of the shinobi with the best performance would be posted, alongside their record. The game that had caught Naruto's eye was simple; it gave the player three chances to throw a dart to pop a balloon affixed to the wall. The current record for the night was held by someone whose name Kakashi didn't recognize, with six balloons popped. His personal record was fourteen, upsettingly one behind Guy's.
He was proud when Sasuke showed an immediate understanding that the trick was to curve the dart, so that it hit multiple balloons before contacting the board. He got three on his first two tries, and four on his last. He looked rather pleased with himself until Naruto stuck her tongue out, eyeballing the plywood ceiling of the stand, and threw her dart upwards, proving once again that she was the superior model when it came to thinking outside the box. She took out an entire column, the dart itself hitting the floor rather than the board, and in short order had blown Kakashi's record out of the water, though he'd never tell her so. The chalkboard said Naruto 22 when they left, Sasuke huffy and his girl beaming, and Kakashi took a moment to pray that Guy would see it at some point during the night.
His genin seemed to be having a blast, even Sasuke letting himself smirk at the antics of his peers as they competed in other games. Sakura turned out to be excellent at coaxing goldfish into her poi without it breaking, and Sasuke had a real knack for the ring toss. Naruto just seemed happy to play, even gravitating towards the less competitive attractions like the senbonbiki.
Kakashi managed to ignore every one of their pleas for him to play, too—really, he was much too old, he was only bankrolling their night—until they came across a strength test that had Guy's name on the chalk board. "Where's the score?" he asked before he could think it through, eyeing the contraption the test was based around. The idea seemed to be that the player squeezed together two bars of metal which were attached to a box that apparently had some mechanism to record grip strength.
The civilian manning the stand gave him a wary look. "He broke the machine," he explained shortly. "Luckily I have back ups." Many of the stands were covered by what was colloquially called shinobi insurance, for cases exactly like this one.
"Ah," Kakashi acknowledged, refusing to look down at the genin who were positively vibrating with excitement that something had caught his interest. "Back ups, plural?"
Three minutes later, Kakashi's name had been added beside Guy's (to his childishly smug satisfaction), the stand owner was exasperatedly switching his newly broken machine out for a working one, and his two female students were giggling at him while Sasuke snorted and muttered something under his breath about rivalry never changing. Naruto's big blue eyes were shining in the light from the lanterns as she looked up at him and teased, "I heard you and Guy-sensei destroyed half the festival once, when you were kids."
"That's an exaggeration," he replied evenly, stepping out of the way of a gaggle of distracted teenaged civilians who'd been threatening to run him over. The destruction had been localized, only impacting a handful of stands, some of which weren't completely destroyed. "Maa, didn't you say you wanted to try takoyaki?" Food nearly always worked to distract Naruto, and it worked then, her eyes lighting up with the force of her smile as she bounced along beside him to obtain the treat.
The takoyaki was a hit, Naruto eating hers in its entirety before Kakashi even dared try to bite into one of the steaming dumplings. It was an unfortunate habit of hers, eating food before it was anywhere near a safe temperature, no doubt encouraged by her advanced healing ability, but he couldn't help but find it charming as she stole one of his with her chopsticks, then one of Sasuke's for good measure. As promised, he got them all the other treats Naruto had wanted to try, in between becoming distracted by various activities and games. The dango and the taiyaki seemed to be her favorites, particularly the latter. She'd been delighted by its fun shape, declaring it 'the other kind of fish cake,' which made him have to bury a laugh in a fake cough.
At the beginning of the night, Kakashi had observed Sasuke gamely being pulled this way and that by the two young kunoichi on his team, but something was shifting in their dynamic as their fun progressed. Sakura and Naruto had begun to exchange meaningful looks, and then Naruto had started to both back off of Sasuke and create opportunities for her teammates to be closer, sometimes literally shoving them together. It had been particularly clever of her to goad Sasuke into standing behind Sakura, taking her wrists into his hands to show her how to throw the ring so that it would land on the neck of one of the bottles on display, both of them blushing all the while.
The final step was so deliberate and well-coordinated that Kakashi was certain the girls had planned it in advance. Almost in sync, they each grabbed one of the poor boy's hands, lacing their fingers together, Naruto teasing him, "Hey, teme, you're our date, aren't you? You should be holding our hands, and telling us that we're pretty."
"You want me to lie to you?" Sasuke had countered instantly, and within a minute of bickering, Naruto let his hand go without him seeming to notice at all that he was still holding Sakura's. It was cute. Pure and sweet and innocent. He wanted it for himself and his girl so badly he startled, struck dumb when her fingers really did wind between his own, pulling him to a stop.
For a moment, she said nothing, black-rimmed eyes fixed on her teammates' backs as they disappeared into the crowd, her fingers tight around his, making his stomach twist with nerves. Then she gave him a breathtaking smile, and said conspiratorially, "The fireworks are soon, they're gonna watch them together. Sakura wants him to kiss her."
"Oh," Kakashi answered blankly, all his thoughts consumed by his desire to kiss the pretty blonde holding his hand. Without his permission, he heard himself suggest softly, "If we're on our own, then, why don't we get away from the crowd? The view will be nice from the top of the monument." Stupid, stupid. Why was he trying to separate her from witnesses? He should know better. He was putting her in danger. He should—
Naruto seemed to disagree, though, beaming at his suggestion, and with an insistent tug, they were off, his girl dragging him by the hand as they went, refusing to let go until they'd escaped from the crowds, but even then, she stuck close to his side. They didn't talk much as they went, both keenly aware that they weren't precisely allowed to be on the Hokage monument and uninterested in drawing attention to themselves as they climbed it. It would have been worth it if they'd gotten in trouble, though, for the awed look on his girl's sweet face as she settled down onto the stone next to him, gazing down at the vibrant lights and bustling rainbow crowd below.
"S'pretty," Naruto murmured. It really was pretty, but Kakashi couldn't focus on it as Naruto demurely tucked her feet under herself, leaning her knees against his thigh and her head on his shoulder. He could only focus on her, her long black eyelashes and the rosy hue of her cheeks, the way her pupils reflected the multicolored lights below them.
Instead of answering her, Kakashi pressed a masked kiss to the top of her head, careful not to mess up her immaculate hair, and she sighed, a contented little noise she made often when he touched her. Completely involuntarily, the hand sitting on his knee turned over, fingers splayed open in invitation, and his girl didn't miss a beat, didn't even look away from the festival below them as she laced their fingers together and held his hand. Her fingers were skinny and delicate between his own, the contrast so enticing it made his mouth dry, and he was so focused on the sight that the first firework surprised him. It shot upwards with a whistle, and burst into golden glitter, but all he could see was its reflection in his girl's eyes, fixated on her delight, on his desire to press his lips against her broad smile.
The next was red streaks, then purple starbursts, gorgeous in the pure black of Naruto's pupils. She glanced at him, caught him staring, but instead of confusion or fear or any of the other more reasonable things that should have inspired in her, her gaze grew soft and fond. He should have looked away, pretended to be interested in the firework display, but he was mesmerized, barely able to restrain himself from tipping downwards into her and drowning.
Her fingers tightened around his, and she pressed her weight against him in earnest, laying her head on his shoulder as she asked so softly that Kakashi almost thought he'd imagined it, "What we have between us… it isn't normal, is it?"
Swallowing, he mechanically forced himself to look straight ahead, seeing but not processing the shower of blue and silver sparks against the starry sky or the festival below. For a moment, he wasn't sure if he'd be able to speak, but he managed to admit in a near whisper, "No, it isn't." It really, really wasn't. It never had been. Kakashi had fucked it up right from the beginning, with his obsession, the immutable need to possess her that had dominated his thoughts for the past thirteen and a half years.
Naruto's thumb stroked the side of his pointer finger, just once, as she asked plainly, "What is it?"
Oh, fuck, was this it? Kakashi couldn't make himself look at her. He was afraid of what he'd do if he looked down into the beautiful, precious face he could see tilted up towards his out of the corner of his eye. He was afraid of realizing she really did know, afraid for her if knowing how badly he wanted her didn't send her running. He swallowed hard, audibly, and listened to the last firework fizzle out, only dimly aware that no whistle of a new one took its place. What was the best way to play this? He couldn't come on too strong. She needed to initiate, the least he could do for her is not initiate anything…
In the end, what left his lips was a vulnerable little, "It's whatever you want it to be, Naruto." That would have to do, right? He was leaving the door wide open for her, and bless her, but she was walking right through it, lifting herself up onto her knees, pressing a kiss to his masked cheek that made him dizzy with want, with need at last being met, and he'd half turned his head to finally, finally meet her lips before she suddenly jolted backwards.
Kakashi's stomach sank like a stone thrown into a lake, clenching his fingers around nothing where her hand had just been, and he almost launched into damage control mode when it hit him that he hadn't been what made her stop. Her eyes were wide with fear and uncertainty, looking down at the festival below. "Something's wrong," she said. "The fireworks were supposed to last half an hour. Look, what's happening?"
Naruto was right, and Kakashi's stomach sank all over again for an entirely different reason. There was indistinguishable yelling—a few voices, not a screaming crowd—and it looked like people were dispersing, like the festival had been abruptly cancelled. Lights were starting to go out all over the streets as vendors shut down operation and people began pulling down and discarding the lanterns. He was on his feet and about to take off when the siren that called all jōnin to headquarters sounded, confirming that whatever had happened was bad. What could it be? They weren't under attack…
"Go home," he heard himself command the girl on the ground. "Get dressed. They might be calling for genin soon if the situation is bad enough. Do you know what that siren sounds like?"
She was scrambling to her feet, looking quite like she'd like to argue about coming with him, but she gritted her teeth and nodded, her blue eyes serious. "It's the one that starts low and rises, over and over again."
"Good girl. Go."
…
The night of the festival would be a memorable one to Kakashi, for years and years to come, not because it was the night he almost kissed Naruto, but because it was the night the Sandaime died, shortly after the fireworks had begun at 10:30pm. A stroke, natural causes, no signs of foul play. A quick and relatively painless death at the end of a long and storied life, almost beautiful in a way—Kakashi eventually heard that he'd gone out with his grandson in his lap, enjoying the firework display together in a rare moment of familial cohesion.
The village went into lockdown, of course. It was of vital importance that news of the Hokage's death did not reach their enemies before the line of succession could be determined and order established. He didn't see Naruto again before he and his ninken were dispatched as part of the team ordered to locate and retrieve Jiraiya—she and the rest of the genin had been drafted as pages in the Hokage tower. He had to leave her a note, instead, and even though he had no time at all to pause, he agonized over what to write, eyes fixed on the kimono and obi discarded on the kitchen table and the geta kicked off by the door. In the end, it said,
Gone on mission. Not sure how long; check bedside drawer for grocery money. Be safe. I'll come back to you as soon as I can. Yours, -K