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Chapter Text

The cry of the cicada

Gives us no sign

That presently it will die. 

~Matsuo Basho

It is a dreary day and heavy fog hangs across the surrounding forest like a funeral shroud. The hem of her wedding kimono drags along the stone steps as she slowly ascends the stairs to the temple. 

Her face has been painted white, her lips are scarlet red, hiding away the tan of her sunkissed skin and the faint freckles that gallivant across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Like this, her blue eyes seem luminous, like fireflies dancing in the dark as she searches his face.

He keeps his expression neutral, placid, as so often glad for the many masks he is hiding behind, even as he offers her his open palm. Her hand is clammy in his and he feels the urge to give it a comforting squeeze. He doesn’t, though.

Instead, he allows his gaze to drag along her face once more, though he is not quite sure what he is looking for. For her irises to be red-rimmed from crying, perhaps. For her lips to part in belated words of objection. But there is no sign of either and, when the priest beckons them, they step toward the shrine together.

Later, he will not be able to recall the details of the ceremony. There are rites and prayers, vows spoken. It is all drowned out by the humming in his head, like the sound of a thousand birds stuffed into a cage and trying to break out, screeching for release.

Before too long, it is finished. The priest has done his part and, with a benevolent gesture, he encourages them to do theirs.

Throughout the long-winded ceremony, she had almost calmed down again, but now her breath hitches once more, her eyes widening as she looks up at him.

Just this one thing and they will be wed. She should run, but she doesn’t. Then again, neither does he.

He does not pull down his mask when he leans in, just fleetingly presses his mouth to her lips. The fabric is damp from his breath, surely unpleasant, and he stays just long enough for this aspect of the ritual to be satisfied. 

With a kiss, Hatake Kakashi seals their fate.

𑽎

It is, of course, a question of politics, and Kakashi curses the day that Tsunade made him Hokage, offloading all sorts of unwanted duties on him. This one, though, not even she could have foreseen. 

The council schemes, as the council is wont to do.

And Naruto may be the heroine of the Fourth Shinobi War but, in the elders’ eyes, she will always be the vessel of the kyuubi no kitsune first. And, as such, she is one of the major assets that Konoha Village has left. 

For there may be peace now, but peace is a fragile thing, fragile enough that Kakashi himself fought and lost too much in two wars. The fox must remain under Konoha’s control at all costs. If something were to happen to Naruto and the tailed beast were to unleash its wrath again, it would need to be resealed.

But the ninetails is the most powerful of all the beasts. Few would be able to contain it, without burning out. 

This is why the Uzumaki had traditionally been chosen as hosts. Because, even as infants, their chakra pathways could withstand the shock to their system. But there are only a handful descendents of the Uzumaki clan left in the world, and only two of them are loyal to Konoha.

Tsunade was widowed too young to have children, and now she is too old. The duty to revive the nearly extinct clan then falls to Naruto. 

Kushina had always meant to have a large family. Kushina had her first child at twenty-four and died in the same breath. As a kunoichi, a long life-span is not guaranteed, and so now it is Naruto who is expected to make up for lost time.

The worst thing is that, to an extent, Kakashi agrees. As Hokage, he knows the necessity of maintaining their hold of the kyuubi. As Naruto’s teacher, he is aware that, sometimes, serving as a shinobi is not just about dying for your village but making other unpleasant decisions as well. But as Naruto’s friend…

Still, the elders insist.

And even then, it should be easy. Naruto has no shortage of friends who would aid her in this, too. But none of them meet the criteria that are presented by the council.

Not the Uchiha, no, because how could we ever trust a Sharingan-user with the kyuubi again, and no one from a prominent family because no clan can be allowed such a monopoly. Not Danzo’s brat because he was raised in ROOT and his loyalties are too uncertain, and certainly not the boy who relies on taijutsu because his chakra pathways never developed right, because who’s to say how that might interfere with the superior genetics of the Uzumaki?

Instead, her future husband must at least have the rank of jounin, be wholly dedicated to the village, no wife or clan or personal shortcomings, and Kakashi finds the list of available candidates that come to mind woefully short.

Shiranui Genma. Morino Ibiki. Oda Ebisu. All unattached jounin from minor families. All men who are significantly older than Naruto and whom she barely knows or doesn’t particularly like. There must be more, surely. There might even be those who would jump at the opportunity of marrying Naruto. 

Some might be enamored with her after her deeds in the war. Others would delight in the idea of dominating the vessel of the demon fox who had once laid waste to their village. And then there would be those who simply wanted her because she was young and beautiful and of good breeding. 

“Your mother was the princess of a lost nation,” Utatane Koharu reminds a protesting Naruto. “You are, too. There are few who would be considered your equal in standing.”

Senju Hashirama and Uzumaki Mito had had an arranged marriage, but those had since fallen out of fashion. Tsunade found her husband on her own, as did Kushina. Kakashi wonders whether the council ever gave them a hard time about what man ought to father their children.

“You are, of course, welcome to take your complaints to the daimyo,” Mitokado Homura points out because, ultimately, they are all subjects of the Land of Fire. “Perhaps he can find a better solution. I heard his youngest son is yet in need of a bride.”

It is a thinly veiled threat, but an effective one. For their daimyo is a fickle man, easily manipulated and eager to elevate his status even further. To have his son marry Uzumaki Naruto - jinchuuriki, war hero, daughter of a Hokage - would be too good an opportunity to pass up.

The mere thought is preposterous. Naruto as the wife of some spoiled noble, trussed up in silks and jewelry, relegated to a life at court with little agency, little adventure.

And Naruto may never have been much of a shogi player, but Kakashi knows that, sometimes, stalling for time is the best strategy you have.

“Does the council agree,” he says, into the tense silence that has taken hold in the wake of Naruto’s impotent fury, “That the most suitable groom to a princess would be a kage?”

Naruto’s eyes meet his, confused, betrayed even. Does she think he is in on this, that he let the council corner her deliberately, so that he might swoop in and snatch her up as his prize?

But no, she understands the value of a plan made out of desperation. Her jaw squares and she gives him a tight nod. 

The council, for once, is satisfied. 

𑽎

While the wedding ceremony had been a small intimate affair, the day itself had been declared an opportunity to make merry. Lanterns have been strung up in the town, street vendors selling food at every corner, children running through the crowds, laughing.

Both under the disguise of a heavy henge, Naruto and Kakashi make their way to the edge of the village where the house of Kakashi’s parents still stands, having narrowly survived assorted attacks throughout the years.

It’s a smaller, traditional house, though Kakashi had always found it much too big to be living in it all by himself. Now, they would live there together.

They drop their henge the moment Kakashi slides the front door closed and activates the wards on the property.

Naruto looks like a bride once more. She does not look like Naruto.

Her gaze casts about the genkan as she slips out of her geta sendals. It looks cumbersome, swaddled in the many layers of her kimono as she is. Some of her hair has come loose where it had been pulled back into a neat updo, and her lipstick is a little smudged.

“Right,” she says, smoothing her palms over her obi. Her socked toes clutch at the wooden floor where she stands. “Wanna give me a tour?”

She’s never been here before, Kakashi realizes, and he doesn’t know whether that makes it more awkward or less. But he doesn’t linger on it, just nods and beckons her to follow him.

He shows her the pantry and the broom closet. The overgrown garden in the courtyard, so neglected and out of control that barely any light reaches through the washi paper of the walls.

He does not point out the grimmer details, like the tatami mats he replaces regularly in the spot where his father killed himself. The blood stains are long gone, but Kakashi still feels as though he could see them, and every few months he gives in to the itch and gets new flooring.

He doesn’t mention the weapons he has stored all throughout the house, because his paranoia won’t allow for anything else, or the pill bottle he keeps in a kitchen drawer.

But he stops for a moment so she can inspect the family shrine: incense and ofuda and photographs. There’s a picture of team Minato, all of them dead safe for him, another of Minato-sensei along with Kushina, her belly just swelling with pregnancy, and a photo of his own parents on their wedding day.

It feels strange to be looking at it today, especially since he is wearing the same hakama and haori his father wore, though his mother’s wedding kimono had been much more modest.

Naruto makes a curious sound, leaning down to take a closer look.

“Your father was so famous,” she says. “I never realized that the Hatake weren’t a big clan.”

“They only produced a handful of shinobi,” Kakashi replies. “Before my father, none of them ever rose to any acclaim. Historically, most Hatake were rice farmers.”

“And your mother? Was she a kunoichi?”

He shakes his head. “No, a carpenter. She actually added many of the wooden details in this house.”

In the picture, his mother is younger than Kakashi is now. His father looks significantly younger, too. He had aged rapidly after her premature death, and then it only got worse when his reputation was tarnished and the village turned on him.

Naruto hums and steps back a little, leaning her head back to look at the woodwork above the shrine. All his mother’s craft, seen by too few eyes. Years after her death, Kakashi had found a chest with all her tools inside and, as an attempt to feel closer to her, took up carving as a pastime. These days, he doesn’t remember the last time he carved anything at all.

“The kitchen is this way,” he tells Naruto, moving back toward the corridor, and she lets out a small huff.

“Don’t expect me to cook for you,” she says, and it’s probably meant as a joke, but it falls flat to Kakashi’s ears. He is doing this specifically so she wouldn’t have to take another husband who might expect her to cook. Who would follow the suggestions of the elders and get her with child again and again, for the good of the village.

“The bathroom,” he points instead. “We’ll have to share. And this is your room.”

He pushes open the shoji door for her to see, but remains standing just shy of the threshold. This was the master bedroom, his parents’ bedroom, and he still cannot quite bring himself to enter.

He cleaned it last week, in preparation for Naruto’s arrival, did some rudimentary maintenance, and then laid out a newly purchased futon. It’s a nice one, large and comfortable, with a fluffy duvet. A proper bed for a married couple.

“My room,” she repeats, peering inside. She’s chewing on her lower lip, getting some red paint on her teeth. “Where do you sleep?”

“Down the hall,” he says, with a jerk of his chin. Still the same room he had as a child, small and familiar. “So you can decorate however you want to. You left your things at the apartment?”

“My lease isn’t up for a few more days, and I didn’t know what I would need,” she says. “I don’t have much, though.”

A childhood in poverty, three years spent on the road, plus a brief and brutal war would have taught her that material possessions are best sealed into a scroll and kept close to your chest. Now here she is, forced to make a new home for herself yet again.

For a moment, she looks overwhelmed, like the reality of the situation is finally sinking in. Or perhaps Kakashi is just projecting.

“I’ll give you time to settle in,” he says, because he cannot think of anything that might comfort her.

Then, he retreats to his own room, where the walls offer little protection, but at least the shadows are known.

He sleeps poorly, but he is used to that, too. 

𑽎

In the first few weeks, they barely see each other. Instead of a wife, it is as though the house were haunted by a little ghost, quiet and mildly messy. 

He finds traces of her, here and there. Long blonde hair stuck to his socks and clogging the shower drain. Tooth paste in the sink, dirty dishes left on the counter, an empty milk carton put back into the fridge. The hair brush and box of tampons stored in the bathroom. The sandals kicked off in the entryway. A photo of Jiraiya-dono added to the shrine. 

She doesn’t do anything major, like rearrange the furniture, though maybe that’s because he has little enough of that to begin with. But she also doesn’t sing off key as she folds her laundry or bug Kakashi to spar with her a little, pretty please, I’m so bored.

But Kakashi is rarely home, busy with his duties as Hokage, and Naruto still goes on missions that take her out of the village for the day or the night. 

Sometimes, they have breakfast together, or dinner, but rarely both in one day, and it is always a little stilted. Naruto doesn’t scarf down her food like she usually might but rather pays special attention to chewing slowly and carefully. She even keeps her eyes lowered, making no attempts to spy on Kakashi as he takes down his mask between bites.

It’s awkward and slightly maddening. Slowly, though, they find their rhythm, unspoken and unplanned, like silent communication on a battlefield. She does the shopping, and he does most of the cooking. They clean and launder as needed. Kakashi could pay someone for those menial tasks, but he doesn’t want someone in his space. Not another someone, at least.

“The garden is pretty overgrown,” Naruto notes over breakfast one day. She had come home late from a mission last night, and she still looks a little tired.

Kakashi looks over to where she had opened the shoji doors to the courtyard to let in the early morning air. Weeds and branches are gently swaying in the wind.

“It is,” he confirms, and Naruto tilts her head to the side, contemplative.

“I could fix that,” she says, and Kakashi remembers seeing the potted plants she had carried into her room, days after the wedding. She’d had a bunch of plants even as a genin, too, the only things that seemed to be thriving in her dingy little apartment.

“I was thinking I could grow some vegetables,” she adds. “Tomatoes and stuff. Maybe some herbs. There’s a bed in front of the house.”

His father used to garden, whenever he wasn’t on a mission. He taught Kakashi about the principles of zen and wabisabi, of inner peace and finding beauty in the imperfect. And then he went and killed himself. Kakashi has let the plants grow wild ever since.

He cannot really imagine Naruto drawing patterns into the pebble bed that must be hidden somewhere under that shrub, but as it stands she can only improve the way things are now: messy and wild and clearly uncared for.

“It’s your garden, too, now,” he says, with a small shrug. “You can do whatever you like.”

For the first time since they became husband and wife, she gives him a bright, genuine smile.

𑽎

The truth of the matter is that she loved Sasuke and Sasuke most likely loved her, too. But he didn’t love her enough to stay. At this point, she probably wouldn’t even bother asking. 

The council and Konoha at large had already messed with Sasuke’s life to an unimaginable degree. Why would he return to raise children here, where he and his had been betrayed over and over? 

In fact, Kakashi suspects that Sasuke has long since given up on his original plan of reviving the Uchiha. Revenge had always been his driving force and, once he ran out of people to kill, he sought some new purpose. Family planning clearly wasn’t it, or else he never would have left Naruto behind. 

It’s all a moot point now. The council is still leery of the Uchiha, and Sasuke hasn’t done much to endear himself to them. They had made it clear that they did not wish for him to have any more control over Naruto that he already had.

So he is a vagrant now, wandering the lands to atone for his sins and find inner peace or something like that and, some days, Naruto almost looks like she isn’t still heartbroken over it.

She’s hunched over a scroll when Kakashi steps into the kitchen, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she reads. The look on her face is hard to describe: joy and worry and longing and curiosity. Kakashi has seen it often enough to know what this is about.

“A letter from Sasuke,” Naruto explains anyway, glancing up only briefly before her gaze is drawn back to Sasuke’s elegant handwriting, sleek black ink and beautiful calligraphy. 

Every couple of weeks, he will send a message to Konoha, to Naruto, to tell her about the things he’s seen, the people he’s met, the places he’s visited. He’ll let her know what direction he is headed to, and what town to address her response to, and she will write back with vigor and much poorer penmanship. 

Sasuke clearly puts effort into those letters, as surprising as that may seem. He doesn’t just do it to keep her off his back as he travels, the bare minimum of information included. Instead, he writes down haiku he has read somewhere or adds a funny drawing of a cat he saw because he knows Naruto will like it.

Sometimes, he even sends little souvenirs along. Trinkets he bought at a market. Tea leaves from far away lands. 

“Look,” Naruto says today, unrolling another scroll that was resting beside her on the table. It turns out to be a shigakiju - a landscape painting accompanied by a poem. The ink painting itself is of a stylized river, its flow interrupted by a maelstrom. Cherry trees are blossoming at the far riverbank.  “Can I hang this up?”

“You don’t need to ask permission for everything,” Kakashi tells her because it’s something she has been doing a lot, though he is only really noticing now. 

Asking if she can turn the radio on in the morning. Asking whether she can grab a shower, or does Kakashi need the bathroom? Asking to plant red camellias in the garden. 

So far, Kakashi has never turned down a single of her requests, so her hesitance confuses him. He had never been the strictest of teachers, and Naruto never the most restrained of students. Their dynamic has shifted now and he understands that she must feel somewhat inhibited by having to live in his house, his territory. But he had thought she would overcome her reservations quickly enough, that she would return to her usual boisterous self.

Another thing occurs to him.

“Have you told Sasuke yet?” he asks and, by the way Naruto’s shoulders hunch up, he knows that he doesn’t have to clarify.

“Not yet,” she admits. “I  haven’t written to him since…”

She trails off, rubs her forehead with the heel of her palm. 

After they had presented their harebrained decision to the council, everything had happened very quickly. No time to overthink or try to find some other solution. Within a matter of days, their lives had been turned on their heads.

“The longer you drag it out, the harder it will get,” Kakashi knows. They both know what kind of grudge Sasuke is capable of harboring. “And he should hear it from you, rather than from someone else.”

The news certainly would have made it past the borders by now. Kakashi can only imagine how Sasuke would react if he had to overhear them in an inn somewhere, other patrons discussing how the Hokage of the Hidden Leaf had married the girl who allegedly ended the war. Most likely, Sasuke wouldn’t believe it at first; but once he looked into it…

“I know,” Naruto says, sounding somewhat miserable. “I’m still working up the nerve. It’s just another thing that’ll make him resent the village.”

And he wouldn’t be wrong for it, Kakashi thinks, but knows better than to voice it. It wouldn’t help the situation. Because the truth is that, the only other option there would have been for Naruto to escape being forced into a marriage, was for her to become a missing nin. And that was an idea she would never entertain. 

When she had to choose between Kakashi and exile, she had picked the lesser evil. It remains to be seen whether that had been a mistake.

𑽎

He wakes with a gasp, his hair sticking to his damp forehead. He’s lying half on top of the tatami mats instead of the futon, and his duvet has been kicked off, lying in a messy heap by his feet.

With trembling fingers, he cards his hair back and then pushes himself off the floor.

In the bathroom, he splashes cold water on his face, scrubbing his palms over the skin, as though he could just wash the memories away. Then, he lowers his hands again, clutches the sides of the sink. His expression in the mirror looks pale and waxen, unmoving like a noh mask. 

He drags his sleeve over his face to dry it, pulls his normal mask over his nose once more. Then, he leaves the bathroom.

In the doorway, he almost runs into Naruto. He hadn’t even heard her footsteps come down the hallway, which either means she deliberately snuck up on him, or he was so out of it his senses were dulled. Perhaps it was a little bit of both.

Naruto looks sleep-rumpled, her hair falling in messy waves around her shoulders. She’s wearing pale yellow pajamas with little frogs and tadpoles on it. Her left cheek is bisected by a deep imprint from a pillow crease.

Her eyes rove over his face.

“You have nightmares,” she observes, and Kakashi blinks slowly.

“Most shinobi do,” he counters, not quite defensive, even though the instinct is there. Naruto must know a thing or two about nightmares, he imagines. Perhaps she is just surprised that Kakashi, as unflappable as he usually appears to be, is similarly afflicted.

His voice is a little hoarse, though, and he wonders whether he had perhaps screamed in his sleep. If he’s ever done that before, then no one was around to hear.

“Did I wake you?” he asks, finding himself agitated by the thought. She shouldn’t have to bear witness to the demons that haunt him still.

But she only shakes her head.

“Needed to pee,” she says, but then doesn’t move.

Kakashi realizes he is still blocking the door. He steps aside.

“Don’t fall in, then,” he tells her. Her answering snort is followed by the sound of the bathroom door closing behind her.

In the safety of his room, Kakashi summons his dogs. Pakkun gives him a baleful look but doesn’t comment. Uhei simply yawns. They are all used to how, sometimes, he cannot stand to be alone at night.

And so, when Kakashi lies back down again, Biscuit cuddles up against his side and Pakkun curls up on his chest, his weight familiar and calming, the pressure forcing Kakashi’s breath to grow deep and even.

He falls asleep quickly after that.

𑽎

“She tells me things, you know?” Sakura informs him, the next time they see each other. She had deliberately come to the Tower for this, well aware when he took his lunch breaks. All his assistants know that lunch break is holy and must not be interrupted, unless there is a major emergency. But there are a handful of people of course who have never bothered to follow Kakashi’s instructions.

“Mah, meddling in a newlywed’s marriage, Sakura-chan?” Kakashi chastises mildly, making a show of rearranging stacks of unfinished paperwork on his desk. “I never would have taken you for the type.”

But Sakura does not take the bait, just places her fists on her hips, standing in front of him like a chiding mother. His students, it seemed, were confused about what roles to take in his life.

“Honestly, sleeping in different bedrooms I understand, but still insisting on wearing your mask everywhere?” Sakura sounds more disappointed than angry and, somehow, that is even worse than what Kakashi expected. “Even after all this, you don’t trust her?”

Not at all where Kakashi thought this conversation might go. In fact, he is surprised how there has been a lot less pushback than what he had originally expected. Even Tsunade had only vaguely threatened him with bodily harm and never followed up on it. 

Now, he just looks up at Sakura, wondering what she wants from him.

“I always wear my mask at home,” he tells her, which is more or less true. He takes it off during showers and he used to during meals. “Nothing to do with Naruto.”

For a moment, Sakura just stares at him, baffled. Then she seems to give herself a push.

“Well, think about what you are signaling here,” she points out. “You’re married to her but are still so cagey about simple things. How is she supposed to let down her guard in turn?”

That aspect of their dynamic had not occurred to him before. He had assumed that the way she mostly stayed confined to her room had to do with not wanting to be around him, not because she didn’t dare.

He’s never known Naruto as someone who holds back. 

“She feels terrible, don’t you get that?” Sakura continues. “She thinks she’s ruined your life or something.”

Kakashi’s mouth falls open. “I volunteered.”

But Sakura only rolls her eyes. “Yeah, once the council had backed her into a corner. She believes you must majorly regret it, considering you’ve been keeping her at arm’s length ever since.”

“It is a very unusual situation,” he hedges, only for Sakura to click her tongue.

“Yes, it is. No one is denying that. But you’re both in it now, and you will be for a while. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.”

She’s probably right. How often is Kakashi going to skirt his responsibility for Naruto? He wasn’t there for her as a big brother after she was orphaned, neglected her as a teacher when Sasuke seemed more promising and she had grown up to look too much like Minato-sensei. And now he is failing as her husband as well.

“I will try to do better,” he promises, and Sakura smiles.

𑽎

In the evening, he returns to the house to find Naruto sitting on the veranda in the courtyard. She’s clearly gotten some gardening done, dirt under her fingernails and one long streak across her forehead where she must have wiped away the sweat.

A large basket stands beside her, full of pulled weeds and trimmed branches. For the first time in a long time, sunshine is permitted to touch the ground, revealing the garden features Kakashi vaguely remembers from his childhood. Here, an ornamental stone lantern. There, a water basin, the accompanying bamboo sozu mostly rotted away. 

Like this, it becomes apparent how large the courtyard actually is. How beautiful it had been when his father still lovingly cared for it.

“You’re back early,” Naruto greets him, one arm lifted to shield her eyes from the spring sun. 

He isn’t back early, not necessarily. It’s just that, since she moved in, he always found an excuse to stay at the Tower longer than before. It didn’t mean he got any more work done, which only made him feel all the worse for it.

Now, he just sits down next to her, one knee pulled up against his chest, looking out at the garden once more.

“You must have worked all day,” he notes, and she grins. 

“Yup! I like it, though. It was a bit like a treasure hunt, finding all sorts of different things. For example! There was a kunai under the porch.”

One of his weapon stashes, in case of an attack. He doesn’t bother telling her as much, though. 

“Thank you for your hard work,” he says instead, aiming for that overly earnest tone that Iruka-sensei always used whenever they checked in after a random D-rank mission. Naruto seems to get the joke because she tilts her head back and laughs. 

“There was a pond, too,” she says. “It’s mostly filled with dirt now, but I can probably get it cleaned up again. Too small for koi, but maybe some goldfish?”

“Goldfish sounds good,” he allows. “Might want to read up on that first, though. I know nothing about aquatic care.”

“I’m the toad expert,” she agrees and raises a small cup to her mouth. He hadn’t noticed the bottle standing on her other side. “Iced tea,” she explains, when she notices him looking. “You want some?”

Wordlessly, he reaches out a hand and she passes him the cup. The fingers of his other hand hook into his mask and pull it down. The fabric pools around his clavicle, and he pretends as though it were no big deal as he takes a modest sip. It’s sweetened green tea, almost too sweet for his tastes, but it’s just the right thing for a pleasant evening such as this. 

Beside him, Naruto has stilled. But she doesn’t say anything. 

Not so long ago, she likely would have started screaming in excitement. Maybe gone to find Sakura and tell her all about it. But things have changed and now she just sits and watches him drink.

“Ino-chan was right,” she muses eventually. “You are really handsome.” 

After a beat she adds, “You look like your mother.”

“Do I?” Kakashi asks, faintly surprised. He always thought he took after his father, same jawline, same hair.

“Hmhm,” Naruto hums. Her bandaged hand lifts in the distance between them, her outstretched finger hovering over the contours of his face. “Around your eyes, I think. Your mouth, too.”

Her fingertip stops just shy of his beauty mark, lingers thoughtfully.

“That’s all you, though,” she decides. “Didn’t expect that.”

“What did you expect, then?” he asks. His mouth is a little dry. He doesn’t remember the last time he properly unmasked in front of another person for any length of time. Like his forehead protector, it is a piece of armor, and to be without it is to be vulnerable.

“Bunny teeth,” Naruto decides. “Or at least a broken nose.”

“I’ve broken my nose,” he chuckles. “It just healed well.”

“Lucky,” she says, the corner of her mouth quirking up, and Kakashi thinks she might not just be talking about the nose.

Together, they sit on the veranda and drink tea until dusk.

𑽎

Chapter Text

The weekend brings cloudy skies and Naruto bemoaning her boredom. There has been a shift, ever since Kakashi started following Sakura’s advice and removed his mask the moment he set foot into the house, slipping into more comfortable clothes. He’s still not used to it, because nearly three decades of habit cannot just be laid to rest with a snap of one’s fingers, but it gets easier each time he notices Naruto gradually thawing up in turn.

The fact that she has come out of her room at all and is now keeping him from reading his novel is proof enough of that.

“Come ooon,” she whines, not so different from when she was as a child. “You must have read that book like a dozen times, I bet.”

“And I still enjoy it,” he claims, pointedly turning another page, keeping his eyes on the writing. 

“But everyone else is busy and I’ve been cooped up at home all day,” she complains. Kakashi wonders whether she is aware that this is the first time she has referred to the house as ‘home’. He tries not to read too much into it. 

“Ennui can be a great exercise to prepare for stealth missions," Kakashi points out, which is technically true. Spying on someone could be incredibly boring because, most of the time, even potential targets were just doing normal everyday things.

“I don’t wanna practice stealth, I wanna spar,” she tells him. “And you should want to as well. You’ll get all rusty, sitting around in your cushy office like that.”

Kakashi’s dark eyes cut toward her. “Rusty, huh?”

“Like a discarded kunai,” she says, a grin tugging at her mouth. “In fact, I think you might be going a little soft around the middle, old man.”

Kakashi snaps his book shut. Even the dig at their substantial age difference barely registers. All he cares about right now is reminding this insolent brat that he can still kick her ass in a fight. 

“Let me find my training gear,” he says, standing up from where he had been lounging on the tatami mats. He tosses the book aside and then makes a point of shrugging out of the faded samue jacket he had been wearing. If he flexes his abs a little as he walks past her, it is purely incidental. 

They find themselves an empty training ground where they are less likely to be bothered. Technically, Kakashi is supposed to have ANBU guards assigned to him whenever he leaves the village proper, but as a formed ANBU himself, he quickly learned that it only increased his paranoia. 

He suggests they only use taijutsu because it is an area where they are both evenly matched, and also because going all out would easily level the surrounding landscape in a matter of minutes. He admittedly also misses his sparring matches with Gai who - now wheelchair bound - has become even more creative when it comes to thinking up new competitions for their rivalry. The last one they had engaged in was dog grooming which Kakashi had actually lost, much to his chagrin. 

Naruto only grumbles a little and then throws herself into the fight with all her power. Kakashi has long since stopped admonishing her about it because, at the end of the day, she was unlikely to run out of stamina first.  Meanwhile, Kakashi has never had any holdups when sparring with someone, figuring there was little point in holding back. He didn’t aim to maim or injure, but he believed that the right amount of pain made for the best teacher. 

And yet, despite the fact that Naruto would heal quickly, he finds himself disinclined to hurt her, his punches pulled, his kicks aimed more carefully. It takes him a few minutes to catch on to this and then to realize that there is some disquiet part of his mind telling him that he shouldn’t be fighting his spouse.

It’s an absolutely insane thought, and Naruto - or any kunoichi worth her salt - would probably call him a sexist. And yet.

Kakashi’s parents would have never fought with each other like this, and not just because his mother had not been a shinobi. Whenever she cut herself on her tools, her husband would have patched her up. When he gardened, she would have brought him some snacks. He must have been injured after missions sometimes, and she must have sat by his bedside, running her fingers through his hair. 

Those are all speculations, of course. Perhaps there had been screaming matches he could not recall. Perhaps his parents had liked to roll around on the tatami mats, the winner of their wrestling matches claiming a kiss as a prize. Kakashi doesn’t know what a normal marriage, a healthy relationship looks like. He doubts he will ever find out. 

Naruto kicks him square in the quest and he skids back a few paces, the momentum threatening to topple him over, so he backflips instead, putting some distance between them. His heart is pumping, blood rushing in his ears, and he must admit that Naruto may have been right. He isn’t rusty as such, but he has definitely missed the thrill of the fight. 

As if reading his thoughts, Naruto wiggles her eyebrows, sticking out her tongue at him. Her playfulness makes her inattentive, though, and Kakashi uses the opportunity to dash forward, grabbing her by the collar of her jacket.

With a burst of strength, he slams her into a tree, hard enough to make the branches shake. The breath is knocked out of her with a grunt, followed by a yelp when the back of her head hits the bark belatedly. She moans pitifully, eyes squeezed shut, and - for just a moment - Kakashi’s grip loosens.

That moment of carelessness is all she needs. In the next second, she has kneed him in the ribs, making him double over and then jerk away, but she is too fast. A kick, a punch, a foot pulled out from under him, and then she has him pinned to the ground instead.

When it comes down to it, she barely weighs anything, and Kakashi could easily flip their position. He doesn’t, though. 

He closes his eyes, so he doesn’t have to see her smug grin.

“I yield,” he sighs and she lets out a surprised little noise. But then she lets him go, throwing her hands up in victory. 

“Yossha!” she cheers, gloating like there is no tomorrow. “I beat the Hokage’s ass!”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Kakashi cautions but of course she ignores him. 

“You have to buy me ramen now,” she declares, and he finally cracks an eye open. 

“I don’t recall any such agreement.”

“Oh please, ” she whines. “You haven’t treated me to dinner in ages.”

Not since this whole mess began.

“We’re married,” he reminds her, as though either of them could ever forget. “All my assets are yours.”

That shuts her up quite effectively, a blush creeping onto her cheeks.

“It’s not the same,” she mutters, arms crossed over her chest. She’s still sitting on top of him, legs on either side of his hips, and Kakashi knows how to pick his fights.

“Fine,” he relents, his tone wry, and rolls his eyes when she cheers some more.

They haven’t really let themselves be seen in public together since before the ceremony. Accordingly, as they amble down the street toward Ichiraku’s, they garner a fair amount of curious gazes.

Kakashi reminds himself that he would have to send out some spies to find out what the people were actually thinking about the two of them, now that they were married. Did the general populace approve, or were they disgusted by it, just like Kakashi would be in their stead? 

A teacher marrying his former student who had been under his care since she was twelve. Surely, he must have groomed her, an easy thing in the absence of her parents Surely, she was a victim, unable to resist the power he held over her, especially considering his position as Hokage.

It sounds like a likely scenario. That he would have enthralled her, one way or another, originally perhaps even using the Sharingan. And now that he was the head of the village, he must believe that no one would question him on the matter. Because powerful men everywhere are all the same. Just look at the sordid books he was reading all the time, not caring who saw him. 

Kakashi the Friend-Killer. Kakashi the Student-Fucker. What did it matter how much truth there was to either accusation?

He only realizes he must have zoned out when Naruto waves a hand in front of his face. They have reached Ichiraku’s already and Kakashi had almost walked past it, so lost in his thoughts was he. 

Naruto looks a little concerned but doesn’t question him on it, just pulls out a stool and hops atop of it. 

“One bowl with extra meat!” she declares in lieu of a greeting, as Kakashi sits down beside her. 

“Extra vegetables for me,” he says, in response to Teuchi’s questioning gaze, even as Ayame and Naruto begin to chat with each other. 

Ayame is married, too, now, Kakashi remembers, to a nice young man who works as a cobbler and whom Teuchi clearly approves of. How would he have reacted if his daughter ended up with a man much older than her?

Minato-sensei must be rolling in his grave. Kushina was likely already working on a way to start haunting Kakashi on a permanent basis. 

He’d been supposed to be some sort of older brother for her, but stayed away long enough that Umino Iruka stepped in to take that role, if only belatedly. And truly, even as a teacher, Kakashi had failed, constantly offloading his duty of instructing Naruto to Ebisu, to Jiraiya, to Tenzou. 

Teuchi places their bowls in front of them and Naruto quickly reties her droopy ponytail.

“Thank you for the meal!” she declares, separating her chopsticks and immediately digging in.

Kakashi eats a little slower, due to having to pull down and replace his mask between bites. He hasn’t had to do that in a while, he realizes. Most of his meals, he takes in his office or in the privacy of his home. He really ought to go out more, he thinks. All day long he is surrounded by clan heads and assistants and ambassadors and citizens making formal complaints, and it is going to give him cabin fever. 

He really hopes he can pass on the mantle to Naruto as soon as possible. He doesn’t necessarily think she will enjoy the reality of the job more than he does, but the ‘I told you so’ would be all the sweeter. 

No wonder Tsunade had hated being Hokage. Minato had loved it, though, so maybe Naruto would, too. Then again, Minato had also been somewhat of a bookish type, very studious and concerned with homework and mission reports, according to Kushina and Jiraiya.

“A word of advice, Hokage-sama,” Teuchi says quietly, leaning across the counter. Beside Kakashi, Naruto has stood up, peering closely at the necklace Ayame is showing off, apparently a birthday present from her husband.

Kakashi cocks an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“I know she likes my ramen, and I’m flattered, truly, but she comes here all the time,” Teuchi points out, which is a strange thing for a food vendor to say. “There are much nicer restaurants around the village. Take her out on a proper date next time.”

The words are so unexpected that Kakashi finds himself at a loss of how to respond.

“This is not a date,” is what he finally settles on. “This whole- It was a thing of necessity.”

One they would get annulled as soon as the elders finally kicked it. Which would hopefully only take a couple more years. Unfortunately, if they didn’t die in battle, shinobi could be surprisingly long-lived. Utatane Koharu especially was the kind of bitch who’d grow to be one-hundred-and-thirty, just to spite them all. 

The look Teuchi gives him can probably best be described as ‘paternal disappointment’. Kakashi cannot be sure. He hasn’t been on the receiving end of one for a long time. 

“There’s a nice kaiseki restaurant just off the main road,” Teuchi informs him, pointing in the general direction. “A bit pricier, but nice ambience. You could make a night of it.”

Kakashi doesn’t bother to keep arguing.

“I’ll take it under consideration,” he says. When he returns to his food, the broth has turned tepid.

𑽎

They are having breakfast one day and Kakashi is studiously ignoring the way Naruto’s nipples are clearly visible through the fabric of her thin sleep shirt. After he had stopped wearing his mask around her, she had stopped wearing her bra when she didn’t deem it necessary. 

In general, she no longer seemed to care about what state Kakashi saw her in, whether it was sobbing her eyes out over some manga she was reading, or moaning from period pain and hogging the toilet because ‘I have diarrhea, okay!’

He distracts himself by reaching for his medication bottle. From the other side of the table, Naruto watches as he shakes two pills into his palm, washing them down with a glass of water.

“Those pills,” she voices what she must have been wondering for a while. “What are they for?”

“They keep my head on straight,” he says curtly, which is true enough. Lately, though, their effectiveness seems to have been waning, so maybe he ought to up his prescription. 

The whole truth is that Tsunade only gave him the Hokage seat under the stipulation that he do something about his depression. The first couple of months, as they figured out the correct dosage, had been hellish. Now, he has reached a careful equilibrium. 

“Oh,” Naruto says, sounding relieved. “I was worried you might be sick.”

But he is, isn’t he? There’s something deeply wrong with him. There always has been, he suspects, but all that life threw at him had not exactly improved his condition.

“Nee, Kakashi-sensei,” she says, and he puts down his glass a little harder than planned.

“Can we drop the sensei?” he asks. She has been calling him that around other people still, and it has gotten increasingly uncomfortable. “We haven’t been student and teacher in a while.”

For a moment, she just owlishly blinks at him. Then-

“Otto-chan,” she says, and he nearly chokes on his spit.

“No.”

“Kakashi-kun?” she tries instead. “Kakashi-sempai?” Her eyes turn sly. “Hokage-sama?”

“Just Kakashi will do,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “You’re a nuisance, have I ever told you that?”

“Once or twice,” she hums. “I take it as a compliment.”

“You shouldn’t.”

She just sticks out her tongue, which proves his point, but she doesn’t seem to realize that.

𑽎

The lawn on the cemetery gets cut on a regular basis but, toward the end of spring, the weeds and wildflowers are growing like crazy. Pushing Gai’s wheelchair across the grounds is a cumbersome ordeal because, everyone once in a while, they will hit a small rock, hidden by the grass.

Since taking office, Kakashi had made it his personal mission to make the village more disability friendly. Considering how frequently shinobi were permanently injured in the line of work, it is something that should have been done a long time ago. 

As it is, the cemetery is somewhat inaccessible to Gai, unless he has someone with him, though most of the time it is Lee or Tenten.

Kakashi himself used to go to the memorial on an almost daily basis. Now, he flits here whenever he happens to have a few quiet minutes because there is usually something else that takes precedent.

“How are things with young Naruto?” Gai asks, and it occurs to Kakashi that he and Gai have not really had a lot of one-on-one time since the wedding. There’s probably some stereotype about a man disappearing on his friends in favor of a new relationship, but it’s not like that’s applicable here. 

“Why do you ask?” he wants to know. Gai isn’t the type to tease him about this, so he assumes that the question comes in earnest.

“Lee mentioned that she seems happier than she initially did,” Gai explains, and Kakashi deliberates his answer.

“We have learned to coexist,” he finally decides. “It wasn’t an easy start.”

Gai hums thoughtfully. “You are two individuals who deal with loneliness very differently. She rails against it, but you hold on to it as though it were a piece of flotsam upon a stormy sea.”

Would it hurt him to be any less insightful? And perhaps a little less enamored with poetics.

“I am adjusting,” Kakashi says, keeping his tone mellow, though he finds himself glad that - due to sitting in the wheelchair - Gai cannot see the expression on his face. They have been friends for too long and, whenever Gai decides to take a closer look, Kakashi might as well be an open book to him.

Yet he is saved from further questioning when they finally reach their destination and Gai’s shoulders tense almost imperceptibly, his gaze doubtlessly drawn to Hyuuga Neji’s name etched into the gravestone. 

Kakashi hadn’t known the boy very well, but he did know the impact he had had on Naruto, both in life and in death. Because Sasuke may have been the first friend who hurt Naruto, but Neji was the first true loss of a peer that Naruto experienced. 

Neji had sacrificed his life to save Naruto, just like Obito had once technically done for Kakashi, and all his dreams had died with him. Hinata and her sister might yet change the Hyuuga from their rigid ways, but it wouldn’t be the same. Neji would not be there to see it. 

Gai had taken the loss hard. Harder than anything before or since. Losing the ability to walk had not crippled him in nearly the same way that the grief had. And Gai was an optimist, always and forever, but there was no silver lining to be found in the death of a child you had been sworn to protect.

Kakashi had seen the same grief twice over in Minato-sensei, even as he was mired in his own version of it. Minato had dealt by throwing himself into his work, especially once he was made Hokage after the war. Then Kushina fell pregnant and some brightness returned to his eyes that had not been there for a long time.  

What would it take for Gai to relieve himself of the burden of guilt that wasn’t his to carry in the first place? Kakashi has been wondering for a long time, and he still isn’t any closer to finding an answer. In fact, he hasn’t even found any words to say that may ease some of Gai’s conscience. 

Frankly, Kakashi still cannot wrap his head around how he had failed his own team so massively and yet, miraculously, they had all survived until adulthood. Granted, Naruto was stuck in an arranged marriage with him, and Sasuke may have all but turned into a wandering monk. But Sakura had turned out remarkably well, especially considering that she had no notable family background or other advantages. 

‘It gets better,’ he wants to tell Gai, because that’s what you are supposed to say to a friend who is struggling, right? And yet, Kakashi cannot bring himself to do so, for the simple fact that he doesn’t think they reflect reality.

Things do not get better. They worsen, or they stagnate, and sometimes you might forget for moments at a time, until something reminds you, and the tsunami of sorrow hits you all over again.

So no, it doesn’t get better. Not for Kakashi. Not in this life. He learned that lesson a long time ago. 

𑽎

They have been married for over two months now, and some of their life has settled into routine. Once a week, they sit down together and fold their laundry as Naruto chatters about random little things. Sometimes, she drops by the Tower, bringing him a store-bought bento box, only to fish out the tempura because she knows he won’t eat them anyway.  

To the outside world, things might not look so different to how they were before. They haven’t had any official public appearances together, just a more casual meet-up with the sister of the kazekage. Temari had heard about their recent wedding of course, delivering her well-wishes and an appropriate present, a nice little tea set that Naruto was surprisingly excited about. 

Luckily, Temari didn’t ask any curious questions, perhaps too busy feigning ignorance in the face of Shikamaru’s own attempts of acting like he wasn’t sweet on her at all. It stung a little bit, seeing those kids still acting like teenagers and knowing that he had inadvertently deprived Naruto of experiencing the same. Not that she was the type to tiptoe around any big emotions she felt. 

But finally, it is time for Kakashi to do his annual visitation of the Academy and, when he offhandedly mentions as much, she immediately declares that she wants to come along. 

He doesn’t see the harm in it, figures it might take some of the attention off of him, because she is actually good with kids and at making nice speeches, so she might act as a bit of a buffer.

It’s only when they stand in front of the assembly, him in his robes and her in her jounin uniform, forehead protector proudly displayed, that he realizes the error of his ways. 

“And we actually got a bit of a surprise for you today,” the head of the Academy, Watanabe-sensei informs the students in a cheery tone. “Because not only did Hokage-sama come to visit us today, he has also brought his wife along!”

Predictably, the children ooh and ahh, especially the girls craning their necks to get a better look at who their parents have doubtlessly been gossiping about. 

Kakashi keeps his expression neutral but, from the corner of his eye, he can see that Naruto is blushing furiously. 

A handful of years ago, when many of these children had still been toddlers, Naruto had been the deciding factor in winning the war. Now here she is, relegated to a politician’s trophy wife. 

Do these kids know that he used to be Naruto’s jounin instructor? If so, how would that affect their relationship to their own teachers? Would they be more susceptible to tolerating inappropriate behavior? Would some teachers abuse their power by whispering ‘there, just look at the Hokage and his bride, she used to be his student, too’?

The thought makes Kakashi sick to his stomach and he almost misses his cue when Watanabe-sensei waves him over toward the center of the small stage.

He had prepared some words to say for this occasion, hadn’t he? Some encouraging words about homework and nindo and protecting your teammates. Right now, though, his head is completely blank.

“The most important thing for a young ninja,” he tells them, his voice sounding off-kilter even to his own ears, “Is to always eat your vegetables, so you’ll grow big and strong.”

The children stare at him, clearly having expected something more interesting as well, and Kakashi flounders on how to continue.

Luckily, he did once manage to teach Naruto a thing or so about teamwork after all.

“That’s a lie!” she protests, jumping forward to stand by his side, and she thumps a self-righteous fist against her chest. “I never ate my vegetables, and I grew big and strong anyway!”

There’s another beat of silence but then, almost as one, the children break out into laughter.

“You don’t look very big, though,” a little Inuzuka in the front shouts, which only amplifies the laughter. “You don’t look any bigger than my brother and he’s twelve!”

Naruto screeches, the reaction probably only halfway exaggerated, and she points an accusing finger at the boy.

“Listen here, knucklehead,” she declares, which is probably rather unbecoming of a Hokage’s wife. Then again, Kushina had been much the same. “You are talking to the future Nanadaime, so you better show me some respect and trust my wise council!”

“That’s not how that works,” the Inuzuka objects. “You don’t become Hokage by marrying one!”

And he makes a gagging sound, as though even mentioning the concept of marriage might give him cooties, and his peers squeal in delight. 

Finally, Kakashi finds his tongue.

“Actually,” he says, with enough gravitas that quiet descends almost immediately. “Naruto is one of the strongest shinobi that the Land of Fire has ever seen.”

The children are paying rapt attention now, their big eyes flickering between him and Naruto who has fallen silent as well. 

“The day Naruto graduated from the Academy, she did so by mastering a Forbidden Jutsu, one that the Nidaime himself had created, and she used it to defeat a traitor of the village. Only a few weeks later, she committed such a heroic deed in the Land of Waves that they named a bridge in her honor. And when she was thirteen, she fought a tailed beast almost single-handedly.”

On and on he goes, telling the future shinobi of the Hidden Leaf about Naruto’s greatest deeds. He doesn’t mention Sasuke or any other sore spots and, slowly but surely, Naruto perks up like a sunflower, her golden head angled toward him. 

He tells the children about her becoming apprentice to one of the Legendary Sannin, of summoning the Great Toad Gamabunta and mastering senjutsu. He talks about her essential role in the war and how she managed to make allies of the other nation’s kage, bringing a sense of peace and unity to their lands. 

“Without her,” he finishes, “Konoha would not be standing today.”

A hush has fallen over the hall, everyone clearly having been pulled into his tale. Then, chaos erupts once more.

“My mother said you are the jinchuuriki of the kyuubi no kitsune,” a little girl farther back pipes up. “Is that true? How did you tame him?”

“I didn’t really tame Kurama,” Naruto says, nodding her head as though in great wisdom. “I just ended up befriending him. He can be a bit grumpy, but he’s alright once you get to know him.”

Like this, the next hour passes in a blink. Naruto demonstrates her shadow clones, and then the rasengan, and even sage mode. She summons Gamakichi who absolutely delights the children by jumping from one head to the next, and then she pulls some flashy taijutsu moves, though she does end up falling off the stage during that bit. 

By the end, the children and, indeed, Naruto herself seem to have forgotten about any of that wife business and, when Watanabe-sensei announces that it is time for recess now, the Inuzuka boy pulls at the hem of Naruto’s trousers and, very earnestly, asks her when exactly she is going to become Hokage because ‘the other one is boring.’

“Quick thinking there,” a voice tells Kakashi as he awkwardly stands on the sidelines of the schoolgrounds while the kids are haggling Naruto for autographs. When he glances behind himself, it is to find Umino Iruka standing there.

Iruka had been present at the wedding, to give Naruto away, a duty that would otherwise have fallen to Minato. Kakashi had seen him around the Tower plenty of times since then, but never managed to properly look him in the eye. During those instances, Iruka had been nothing but professional, and Kakashi had almost been able to forget that this was the same chuunin who used to chew him out over poorly-written mission reports.

But there is no ill-will in Iruka’s voice now, just a slightly lopsided smile on his face that matches the scar across his nose. 

“The children can be a handful, when they get out of control,” Iruka continues. “But you handled them remarkably well. Wish they would pay that much attention to me when I am teaching history.”

“It’s merely about having an interesting protagonist,” Kakashi muses, because that is true for all his favorite novels. “Naruto certainly makes for an exciting tale.”

“That she does,” Iruka agrees, sounding rather fond. “You are handling her pretty well, too.”

Ah. There it is. The inevitable judgment of whatever bizarre relationship they currently have.

“She was worse as a gennin,” he says easily. Maybe, if he leans into just how young Naruto had been when she first came under his tutelage, the whole arrangement will look less suspicious. He is just an avuncular mentor, a benevolent savior. The marriage was a means to an end. There’s nothing untoward happening. 

“It’s good you defended her,” Iruka continues. “She is still so concerned about having to prove her worth, and Satoru-kun’s remarks rattled her more than she let on, I think.”

Satoru must be the Inuzuka boy, Kakashi assumes, the one who is currently letting himself be lifted by hanging off Naruto’s biceps, like a nimble little monkey.

“She will be the Nanadaime someday soon,” Kakashi says with calm certainty. “And she worked hard for it.”

“Well,” Iruka drawls. “Let’s not act like the position of Hokage is entirely merit-based. There’s been entirely too much nepotism. And, in one way or another, Naruto has personal connections to every single one.”

Not an inaccurate assessment, and so Kakashi does not take it as a slight against his own suitability. 

“I’m all in favor of allowing the people to vote on who should become Hokage, instead of just letting the council make their pick,” he says. “But even then, Naruto would get elected.”

“She’s certainly building good rapport with her future voters,” Iruka jokes, nodding over to where Naruto is now using her shadow clones to lift up all of the children.

Before long, recess is over. Naruto practically jumps into Iruka’s arms for a hug and wheedles a promise for Ichiraku out of him. Idly, Kakashi wonders whether Teuchi ever told Iruka to take his best customer to eat somewhere else; somehow, he doubts it. 

“That was fun!” Naruto announces, once they are off the school grounds. “I think we should do that more often. Seeing some cool ninja stuff is way more motivating than just reading about it in some boring book.”

“I’m sure the teachers would appreciate it,” Kakashi says. “Though maybe don’t let the students know how poor your grades actually were. If they find out they can skip the studying and still become Hokage, the village will be run by idiots.”

“The village is being run by idiots,” Naruto shoots back and, when he swats at her, just jumps out of the way, cackling. 

𑽎

Soon after, Naruto leaves on a one-week mission. It’s nothing major but still enough action that she is chomping at the bits for it. Her life had been filled with a long sequence of dramatic events that peace must still feel like something of a chore to her. 

“I’m leaving!” she calls as she goes. “Don’t forget to feed the fish!”

The goldfish had finally been added to the pond, and Naruto had spent the first evening sitting on the veranda, staring into the water, just watching the smooth orange bodies dart around. 

Kakashi finds himself doing the same once she is gone, for lack of something better to do. The silence is only interrupted by the trickle of water and the accompanying rhythmic clacking of the sozu. 

There’s a difference to this new emptiness in the house, he learns within the first few days. Before, the silence had been caused by the ghosts of the past, people long dead who would never return. There was a dull pain to that kind of silence, but also an underlying sort of peace. Kakashi could regret what had happened, but he knew none of those he had lost would return to him. In that way, he and the silence had found an accord.

But the silence of Naruto’s absence is loud and glaring. It’s in how her shampoo still sits in the shower and he cannot throw it out because she will be back to use it again. It’s in the strawberry mochi she bought, the ones she told him not to touch because ‘those are mine, get your own!’

This, Kakashi learns, is a different kind of haunting, one that he finds all the more unbearable for how unused he is to it.

He misses her. He misses how she sings pop tunes under her breath as she wrestles with the dishes. He misses how she fusses over the saplings she has planted, and how she coos at the tiny tomatoes that have started to grow on their stalks. 

Seven days after she leaves, the property wards chime merrily and, a second later, the door is pushed open with too much force.

“I’m home!” Naruto calls, unaware of how she nearly made Kakashi drop his teacup. He reaches for a dish towel to mop up the mess he made.

“... welcome home,” he returns and listens to her stomp down the hallway, more like an oni than a ghost, and the house feels a little warmer again. 

𑽎

Spring turns to summer, chimed in by the first cry of the cicada.

For the first time in years, the garden looks like a garden instead of a voracious jungle, and Kakashi watches Naruto tend to it from the safety of the veranda. 

She’s got her hair up in a messy bun, single strands coming loose, and she keeps blowing a particularly annoying one out of her face every other minute. Her biceps bulges when she picks up the watering can. 

She speaks to the plants, Kakashi has learned. Chatting with the burgeoning strawberries, encouraging blossoms to bloom. Her tone is softer than the one she used with the students at the Academy, but her attitude seems to be the same: peppy and challenging. 

In the afternoon, Kakashi cuts up a watermelon that he bought at the market on the way home yesterday and neatly arranges the slices on a platter. Then, he takes them out to the veranda. 

“Care for a break?” he calls out and her head immediately swivels around. 

“Hell yeah!” she cheers and hops over to join him where he has sat down.

Her feet are bare and dirtied, her pants are folded up to expose her muscular calves. Kakashi slides his gaze away, concentrates on the slice of watermelon in his hands. It’s not perfectly ripe yet, a little too tangy, but it still tastes good. He makes short work of it, sucks and bites at the flesh, intermittently spitting out the seeds. 

When he reaches for another slice, he finds Naruto’s eyes trained on him, and he cocks a questioning eyebrow. Her eyes drop, land on his upper arm where he has the sleeves of his yukata rolled all the way up. 

“How long were you a part of ANBU?” she wants to know, gaze tracing the swirl pattern that had been tattooed onto his skin a day after he was accepted into the ANBU ranks.

Kakashi deliberates over the watermelon slices, before he picks up another one. “Almost ten years.”

“That’s a long time.”

“It was,” Kakashi agrees, though most of his recollections of that time are foggy around the edges. For a long time, it had been mission after mission, with nothing else to track the passing of time. There were birthdays, his own and other people’s, parties he was invited to, anniversaries of deaths. And then, one day, the Sandaime decided it was time for him to step down and take on a genin team. Kakashi had been twenty-three then, and it took another three years for him to actually accept any of his potential students. But Naruto knows the rest of that story.

“Why’d you join?” she asks. “I mean, Sai was forced to when he was just a kid…”

Kakashi hums thoughtfully, swallows down a mouthful of melon. “It was your father’s idea. After my teammates died, he thought it would keep my mind off of things.”

For a moment, Naruto is silent. Then, she says, “You lost your team members and he made you join special ops?”

Kakashi nods.

“That’s-” Strangely, Naruto sounds disturbed, so Kakashi glances over at her. Turns out, she looks disturbed, too.

“He-” she says, her gaze crystalline. “Why would he do that? Wasn’t he your teacher?”

“It was around the time he was made Hokage,” Kakashi explains. “He didn’t have the time to keep me on as his student. But he assigned me to be your mother’s guard, while she was pregnant with you.”

And he had failed at that, too. 

“I-” Naruto seems incapable of forming full sentences. She’s hunching in on herself, as though she had a sudden stomach ache. “But you were just a kid.”

“I made chuunin at six, Naruto,” he reminds her. “I fought in a war before I was ever officially assigned to be on your father’s team.”

“But that’s worse,” she insists. “Don’t you see how that’s worse?”

“Times were different-” he begins, but Naruto cuts him off right away, ever the idealist.

“But would you have done the same to us?” she challenges. “If- If Sasuke and I had killed each other at the Valley of the End, would you have suggested Sakura join ANBU?”

At thirteen, Sakura would have been nowhere near the skill level required by ANBU, but that is not the point Naruto seems to be getting at.

“But I did abandon her,” Kakashi points out. “I abandoned all three of you. I didn’t look for Sasuke, and I stepped down as Team Seven’s instructor.”

Naruto is still staring at him. “You think that’s the same as making a kid join ANBU?”

“Why are you so upset by this?” Kakashi asks, because he genuinely does not understand. “You know the basics of my history-”

“I didn’t know my own father screwed you over like that,” Naruto claims. “And- And my mother knew, too? She just let it happen?”

There is genuine anger in her voice, anger that immediately has Kakashi on the defensive, because no one had the right to criticize Minator-sensei in his presence, not even his own daughter. 

“You’re taking things out of context,” Kakashi says tersely. He sets his watermelon aside, drags his fingers through his hair, regrets it immediately because his palms are sticky with juice. “You weren’t there. You didn’t live it-”

“I grew up alone, too,” Naruto says. Her cheeks are ruddy with how incensed this conversation has gotten her, a deep furrow between her brows. “And that was bad enough. But when Sasuke ran away, you encouraged me to go travel with Ero Sennin. You made sure I was taken care of. You didn’t send me Danzo’s way.”

“Your father didn’t know about ROOT,” Kakashi shoots back. There’s some nervous energy in him now and he finds that he can no longer remain sitting there. The pleasant mood from before is gone.

He pushes himself off the veranda, tightens the belt of his yukata around his middle. He feels strangely off-kilter and one of his feet hits the plate with the fruit, making it clatter loudly.

“Kakashi-” Naruto tries to stop him, one hand stretched out, but Kakashi is already halfway inside.

He does not look back at her and, when he passes by the family shrine to his left, he does not look at that either. He doesn’t dare.

𑽎

Later that evening, she apprehends him in the kitchen, when he has just started chopping up the vegetables for dinner. She eats vegetables now, without complaining, and has even gained a little healthy weight now that she doesn’t mostly live on cheap instant ramen and plain rice anymore. All those attempts Kakashi made to convince her of following a more nutritious diet, and all he had to do was to marry her and become her live-in chef.

Now, she leans against the counter beside him, trying to catch his eye. Kakashi studiously keeps his eyes on where the knife is slicing through the beets.

For a long moment, she stays silent, just looking at him.

“I’m sorry about what I said about my father,” she says and Kakashi cannot help but tense.

“I’m not-” he starts, only for her to interrupt him at once.

“Maybe,” she says. “But I still need to say it.”

She kicks her heel against the front of the counter, seemingly looking for the right words. When she finds them, they come out quietly rushed. 

“It’s just- For the longest time, I didn’t know him at all, or rather, I only knew of the Fourth Hokage. And even when I learned who my parents were, it seemed like everyone had always just talked about him as this perfect person. You and Ero Sennin and- and the damn history books. And then I got to meet him and- I was so happy I got the chance at all, but I never thought about-”

She cuts off, frets for a moment.

“No one is perfect,” she says, sounding a little choked up. “And I knew that but. I still bought into the fantasy. When you told me about the ANBU stuff, it just made me realize that the same goes for my parents.”

Kakashi opens his mouth, but she stalls him with a lifted hand.

“You don’t have to agree. We can have different views on this, I guess.”

“Then why are you telling me at all?” Kakashi asks, his fingers clenching around the hilt of the knife, but Naruto shrugs.

“I dunno. I just wanted to let you know that you deserved better. That’s all.”

Kakashi swallows. His throat feels tight, which is fine, really, because he doesn’t know how to reply anyway.

It still baffles him that, out of his motley group of gennin, Naruto had always been the one with the highest level of empathy and emotional intelligence. Sakura may have grown up in a stable home with parents who nurtured and adored her, but she was also the one who was the most likely to start yelling and throw fists. Meanwhile, Naruto somehow managed to simply talk people out of committing genocide. 

And Kakashi has been to the specialists that Tsunade insisted he see, but none of them ever managed to pierce through to his core with only a handful of words like this. 

Naruto is still eyeing him cautiously, awaiting his reaction and, when none is forthcoming, she squirms a little.

“Can I give you a hug?” she asks, her voice small. “I feel like we both need a hug.”

He puts down the knife. 

Naruto’s arms are around him before he even has had time to blink, and the surprise of it nearly knocks the breath out of him. 

Even standing on her tiptoes like this, she is a fair bit shorter than him, and her arms hooked around the back of his neck force him to bend down toward her, stiff and mechanical. But her body is warm and she smells familiar, like herself but also like the house, or maybe it is just that the house has started to smell like her, and something about that allows him to relax a little. 

Hesitantly, he places his hands on the small of her back, holding her in turn.

There’s something awkward about it, a lack of muscle memory, like gripping a non-standard size kunai, itching fingers trying to tell him that something is off. 

He had held her before, many times on different occasions. In his arms, after her first fatalistic fight with Sasuke. On his back, when chakra depletion made her knees buckle. Always a necessity, never a kindness. Never initiated by her. 

Unexpectedly, Kakashi finds himself overcome by the urge to bury his face in her hair. He resists, barely, though he does turn his face until the tip of his nose touches her temple, breathing her in.

They stand like this for a long time. 

𑽎

Chapter Text

Kakashi rummages through the dusty chest he has unearthed from storage. Yet when he finds what he is looking for, he cannot help but simply stare at it for a moment.

His mother’s tools, even after three decades of disuse and darkness, are still sharp: the whittling knife, the carving knife, the chisels and the rifflers.

He takes them out of their kit and inspects them with careful fingers, the shape of them half-remembered, though his hands had been much smaller back then. 

Wood carving had been one of the few things he ever taught himself straight up, without the help of a teacher or the Sharingan. As such, it takes him several days to get back into it, and then several attempts until he is happy with the result.

The little toad figurine fits into the palm of his hand, intricate markings on its back and its eyes lively and bright. The wood itself is aspen, light-colored and soft, but Kakashi polishes it with orange oil until it is smooth and fragrant. 

He waits until Naruto leaves the house one day and uses the opportunity to sneak into her room. So far, he has only caught glimpses of the inside, and he allows himself to look a little more closely now.

She’s spread herself out into every corner of the room. The futon is still rolled out, unmade and rumpled, potted plants stand wherever the light reaches, discarded clothes and kunai litter the floor. She’s put her scrolls and books and manga onto the small shelf, alongside a variety of framed pictures: her and Iruka, her and Jiraiya, Team 7 as gennin and after the war, a group photo with several of her friends, probably taken at someone’s birthday party.

Kakashi places the wooden toad between the photos of Team 7. Then he leaves again.

𑽎

Kakashi is about to leave for work when Naruto finally deigns to crawl out of bed.

“Are you cooking tonight?” she asks around a yawn, peering into the fridge as though it were the maw of a feral beast and she had a death wish. “Because then I’ll need to go shopping in a bit.”

“Actually,” Kakashi says, not allowing himself to think about it. “I was thinking we could eat out. Can you be at the Tower around six?”

She twists her head over her shoulder to blink up at him. “Yeah, sure. What are we getting?”

“That’s a surprise,” Kakashi says, which probably makes it sound unnecessarily grand. He’s halfway out the door when he finds the nerve to add, “Wear something nice.”

He is stupidly antsy all day, which means he actually distracts himself by doing his paperwork, and his assistants look at him as though he might have been replaced by an imposter. The hours seem to pass simultaneously much too quickly while dragging on endlessly. 

Eventually, though, the day is done and he gets to shrug out of his robes before he makes his way down the stairs of the Tower.

Once outside, he finds her on the other side of the road, playing hopscotch along the chalk drawings that some children had left behind and, for a moment, he just watches from afar.

Clearly she must have followed his instructions to wear something nicer, because she’s in a powdery blue summer dress he’s never seen before, a pair of black leggings flashing out from underneath the skirt with every little jump. Instead of her sensible ponytail, she’s got her hair in a neat fishtail braid that Kakashi doubts she had the skill or patience to do herself.

When she finally notices him, she gives him a bit of a look, as though he may have been only watching silently to better make fun of her for it, but he just raises his hand in a little wave and she hops over toward him.

“So, where are we going?” she demands at once. 

“A restaurant,” he tells her and she rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, I figured, but which one? Why’d we have to dress up for it?”

She eyes him from the side, clearly checking out the yukata he had put on over his usual masked shirt. It’s a sedate blue fabric with white pinstripes, nothing ostentatious. An indirect hand-me-down from his father’s closet, in surprisingly good condition despite the many years it had languished in a chest full of forgotten things. 

“Because it is an upscale restaurant,” Kakashi explains patiently. “And sometimes it’s nice to not wear the same uniform every day.”

“I guess,” Naruto says, arms crossed behind her back and she follows him down the street. She waves at Ayame and Teuchi when they pass by Ichiraku’s, yelling a promise that she’ll come back another time. Luckily, she seems to miss the thumbs-up that Teuchi gives Kakashi. 

However, when they eventually reach the kaiseki restaurant, Naruto seems to be a little daunted by how fancy it actually seems to be.

“Here?” she asks uncertainly, her gaze flickering over the nice storefront where replicas of the available dishes are displayed. “I don’t think they’ll let me in here.”

With a cold stab of anger, Kakashi remembers that, for much of her life, Naruto had been treated as an outcast by the majority of their village. Of course it never would have occurred to her to enter an establishment such as this. Then, with a hotter flash of guilt, he reminds himself that things could have been different if only he had been there for her. 

But they are pointless musings and he should know better to lament the past.  

“If they refuse you service, I’ll take them down for tax fraud or something,” he claims and then holds the door open for her. Naruto hesitates for just another moment but then steps into the small ante-room.

“It’s just,” she mumbles, keeping her voice low as though someone might overhear, “It got better once I graduated and people got to actually know me. But most of those were shinobi, and then I was gone for three years, and when I got back some of the civilians were still…”

She trails off, chews on her lower lip. 

Kakashi remembers instances like that. D-rank missions where people saw the team that had been assigned to them and suddenly did not want their fence painted anymore. Citizens who threatened to put in an official complaint with the Sandaime.

Naruto never made a fuss over it, more concerned with distracting Sakura and Sasuke from their confusion over the matter. Kakashi, however, had had no such hold-ups. Anyone who refused his team’s service got blacklisted from booking any missions in the future, and the civilians also got visited by some very stern jounin reminding them how anything that hinted at the identity of the kyuubi’s vessel was not to be discussed in front of the younger generations. 

For all the good that rule had done. Kakashi had many grievances with Sarutobi Hiruzen, but the most glaring one was still his irrational decision of essentially disowning Naruto from her parents’ legacy and letting her live in squalor and ostracization.

“If you’ve got any names, I’m not above committing arson either,” Kakashi tells her and that, finally, makes her laugh a little.

“You’re so dramatic sometimes,” she scoffs, finally entering the restaurant itself, cheerfully greeting the hostess.

“I booked a private room,” Kakashi tells the young woman, a decision that had been primarily made so he won’t have to bother with his mask. However, he also doesn’t really want anyone listening in on their conversations and he is grateful for it now because, even though she tries not to show it, the hostess is clearly curious about them.

“Right away, Hokage-sama,” she says with a slight bow and, toward Naruto she adds, “Hatake-san. Please follow me.”

Kakashi expects Naruto to bluster and protest, because she is not a Hatake. One consensus they had reached with the council was that Naruto would keep her own name and that any offspring of theirs would also be called Uzumaki, considering her clan had more relevance. The Sandaime had made a similar decision back when Naruto was an infant: naming her Uzumaki instead of Namikaze protected her from her father’s enemies and kept her mother’s bloodline alive.

But Naruto does not correct the hostess, and so Kakashi doesn’t bother either. 

The woman leads them past the other guests, some of whom pause mid-chew, staring openly, only to act like they didn’t when Kakashi catches their gaze. 

The backroom is just as intended, small and intimate, with warm lights and fusuma panels depicting a mountain landscape. Their hostess directs them to a low table in the middle of the room and then leaves them alone with the menus, promising to return soon to take their orders.

Naruto looks around with her mouth open, taking in the ornate details, the lacquered table, the embroidered zabuton cushions. 

“Ero Sennin once took me to a brothel that looked a little like this,” she informs him, which is not exactly the reaction he had been aiming for.

“He took you to a brothel?” Kakashi asks. “How old were you?”

“Just turned fifteen,” she says with a shrug. “Don’t worry, I didn’t see any of the action. He was there to gather some intel and I just hung out with some of the girls in the back.”

She has picked up one of the menus now, her eyes immediately widening in shock. “This place is expensive!”

“I think I can afford it,” he comments dryly, glancing down at his own menu. Being Hokage pays surprisingly little, but he does have twenty-five years of doing high-rank missions at his back, so it’s not like he cannot splurge when he wants to.

“Still,” she insists. “We could have done Ichiraku’s, like normal.”

“Maybe I was in the mood for something else,” he suggests, but of course that isn’t enough of a reason for her.

“Well, if you are sick of ramen, you could have just said so! There’s this new udon place that opened up. Chouji said it’s pretty good.”

Why is he even trying? What is he even trying? Teuchi put some stupid idea in his head, and suddenly Kakashi thinks Naruto is the type of person who actually enjoys this kind of stuff. 

He still remembers the rough-and-tumble tomboy she had been as a recent Academy graduate, the one who cut her hair with kitchen scissors and used her shampoo as body wash and dish soap. 

“Mah, but you got all dressed up now,” he drawls, in an effort to distract her. “I didn’t even know you owned any dresses.”

“Well, I didn’t, but you said to dress nicely and I wasn’t sure what that meant, and most of my clothes have stains or holes and stuff, so Hinata-chan helped me pick this out,” she explains in one breath, plucking at the fabric. Then, she seems to remember something else. “Oh, oh! And then I bought this!”

With those words, she unceremoniously reaches under her skirt and pulls out a slim butterfly knife that must have been strapped to her thigh. She plays around with it, metal clicking as she reveals and conceals the blade again and again, and Kakashi is once more grateful for booking the private room. What might the other patrons - most of them likely civilians - say if they saw the Hokage’s wife practicing knife tricks over dinner?

“Is the knife part of the outfit?” he asks, even though he cannot exactly blame her for getting excited over acquiring a new weapon. It kind of comes with the job. 

“I do think it elevates it,” she says decisively and, secretly, Kakashi finds himself agreeing. 

Finally, she puts the knife away again, turning back to the menu.

“Oh hey, they serve ramen here,” she notices, and Kakashi makes a mental note to never trust Teuchi again. 

𑽎

“You took her on a date,” Sakura singsongs, and Kakashi barely stifles a groan.

“I did no such thing,” he says, but Sakura clearly isn’t buying it.

“Uh-huh,” she says around a poorly suppressed grin. “Private room in a fancy restaurant? Do you do that for all your students? Because I am free on Thursday.”

“I have to bathe my dogs on Thursday,” he lies. “Ask Tenzou to take you.”

“No, teasing him is not nearly as much fun,” she sighs. “I lack ammunition, you see. With you, there are so many low-hanging fruit at the moment.”

“Too much fruit will give you diarrhea,” he informs her tartly, but she merely laughs.

“Oh, don’t get riled up,” she huffs, hands on her hips. “I think it’s great. You’re working things out. Didn’t look like it in the beginning.”

“There’s no working things out,” Kakashi claims. “Because it wasn’t a date.”

Wrong move. Too defensive. It isn’t like him, and Sakura looks at him askance.

“I was just joking,” she says slowly. “I simply meant it’s good you’re no longer acting like strangers around each other. I didn’t think…”

She trails off, just stares at him for a bit longer, as though she were an Aburame and he a very fine specimen of dung beetle.

“We got dinner together, we do that sometimes,” Kakashi says, hoping it is not obvious how his calm is entirely fake. “I don’t always feel like cooking, and I don’t always feel like cheap street food either. If Naruto is reading something into this-”

“Oh, hey now,” Sakura warns him, lifting a hand. “Don’t throw her to the dogs. She just mentioned going shopping with Hinata-chan and I asked some follow-up questions. She never used the word date. But now you’re blowing things out of proportion, and it seems kind of fishy.”

Ugh, he hates her. She was his favorite student when they were brats, because she was pretty smart and reasonable once you took Sasuke out of the equation. But now that same intelligence is being used against him and he doesn’t like it one bit. But of course, a kunoichi must exploit every weakness she sees. 

She attacks by pulling a chair closer, plopping down in front of him where Kakashi is trying to disappear behind his desk. 

“Okay,” she says, propping her elbows up on the desktop. “Tell me everything.”

“There is nothing to tell, you are making mountains out of molehills, and if you keep bothering me, I’ll sic my ANBU on you.”

“Oh wow,” she says, her mouth falling open. “You’re catching feelings, aren’t you? For Naruto?”

She says it as though it were truly unfathomable, and some of Kakashi’s displeasure at that must show on his face, because her eyes widen even more. 

“Oh, this is bad,” Sakura says, as though he might not already know. “This is so awkward. You’re in a sham marriage.”

“Unless you have anything worthwhile to say,” Kakashi returns, progressively more terse, “I would appreciate it if you let me return to my work now.”

Fortunately, Sakura does know him pretty well in this, too, and thus can tell when she is truly overstepping. 

“Alright,” she says simply, pushing out of her chair with a sigh. “I won’t mention it again. Unless you need some advice. Or a shoulder to cry on.”

He glowers at her from underneath the brim of his hat and Sakura quickly makes for the door. Before she leaves, however, she does turn around one more time.

“For what it’s worth,” she tells him, “Naruto really did enjoy that date, even if she didn’t know it was one.”

She closes the door before he can hurl a kunai at her.

𑽎

It’s the first properly hot day of the year and Kakashi swelters underneath his robes the entire time he is at the office, feeling unpleasantly rank with sweat. Accordingly, when  he returns home that evening, he immediately shrugs out of his clothes, eager for a cold shower.

The bathroom, it turns out, is occupied.

“Hey!” Naruto complains, as though she weren’t the one who had forgotten to lock the door. She sinks lower in the wooden bathtub, until only her head and her knees are visible above the water, arms crossed over her chest.

“I thought you were meeting with Ino and Sakura,” Kakashi says, in his own defense. He is stupidly grateful that he is still wearing his pants and masked shirt. 

“Well, I did, and they kicked my butt during training,” Naruto mumbles. She ducks her head even further, until her mouth is underwater and small bubbles appear on the surface as she continues to air her grievances.

“How much longer do you need?” Kakashi asks, and she pops back up again.

“Why, do you need to take a shit?” she wants to know.

“I was going to take a shower,” he sighs, vaguely gesturing at himself. “But if you’re going to be much longer…”

He could hose himself down in the garden. Could even wait for her to get out of the tub and not waste any water.

“I can close my eyes, you know,” she says and promptly demonstrates this. “Here, now you can shower, no problem.”

He shouldn’t, probably. But he has been looking forward to his shower for hours, and if he makes a big deal out of this, then it is going to feel like Sakura is right about something.

“If you don’t mind,” he says and takes off the rest of his clothes, folding them over the small stool in the corner. 

He climbs into the shower stall, turning the water as cold as it will go. It hits him like a thousand needles and he tenses against it, but a few moments later it begins to feel good. He washes his hair, scrubs down his body, and shuts the water off again.

He fumbles for a towel, slings it around his hips before he gets out again.

“I’m done now,” he announces, using another towel to wick the moisture from his hair.  

“There, was that so ha-” Naruto huffs, only to cut off abruptly. 

Kakashi lowers his towel, dabbing at his damp chest, and glances over at her. Naruto’s gaze is pointed at the ceiling, the lower half of her face submerged in the water, carefully ignoring him.

So he’s made her uncomfortable after all. He should have known. 

Kakashi takes his towels and goes to dry off in his room. 

𑽎

Another letter from Sasuke arrives, and Kakashi immediately knows that Naruto must have finally told him. It’s in the way she angles her shoulders, the unhappy slope of her mouth. 

This is Naruto the way she always got when someone tried to make her understand that Sasuke was beyond help. That he was lost to her.

“Here,” she tells Kakashi anyway because she has never made a secret of the contents of those letters, freely sharing them with Sakura and Kakashi and anyone who might be interested, even though there were precious few people who cared about Sasuke purely for Sasuke’s sake. 

And so, before Kakashi even starts reading, he knows that this letter is different from the previous ones Naruto had received. It’s shorter, for one, with Sasuke limiting his reply to only a few curt lines. There are no funny doodles this time, nor any souvenirs, and his usually neat calligraphy has been replaced by a hasty scrawl, ink blotches marring the paper.

This message, Kakashi understands, was penned in tightly controlled anger.

‘Do what you must,’ Sasuke has written, and Kakashi can easily imagine the carefully apathetic tone in which he would have spoken the words in person, if he had the guts to come and actually meet Naruto face-to-face. ‘I have no right to stop you. You know what my opinion of the village is, and this is merely further proof. No matter what you do or how much you sacrifice, they will always demand more of you. That Kakashi was dragged into this shows that, even as Hokage, you must bow to the whims of others. All for the supposed greater good.’

He isn’t wrong, and Kakashi feels the truth of it keenly. However, it is the kind of thought that he has never dared to linger on for long. A gleaming spark has to be stepped on to snuff it out; if you let it simmer, it will just burn down everything you have built.

It’s why Kakashi can empathize with why Sasuke felt the need to leave Konoha. In a way, he might even admire Sasuke for sticking to his principles. For prioritizing his own sanity and well-being over any sense of loyalty and belonging to the Leaf. The last of the Uchiha may have accepted that Naruto would never truly let him go but, apart from her, there was nothing for him in the village - just a blood-drenched past and an embittered future.

And now… now the village has taken Naruto from him as well.

Naruto has crept closer to Kakashi, leaning her head against his shoulder to peer down at the letter as well.

“Do you think he hates me?” she asks, her voice terribly small, and Kakashi cannot help but wonder whether she is heartbroken over Sasuke’s feigned indifference, or the fact that he is ultimately right.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Kakashi soothes. “It’s his way of showing his cares.”

If Sasuke didn’t care, he wouldn’t have answered her letters. He never would have returned to Konoha, if only for a handful of months. 

For a moment, Naruto is silent. Then-

“Do you hate me?”

Kakashi stills, blinks, finally lowers the letter and sets it aside. Because of the way they are sitting, he can only see the top of her head, not her face, and he thinks that maybe she prefers it that way. After all, Naruto has worn her fair share of masks herself.

“Why would I hate you?” he asks, and she shrugs vaguely.

“Everyone is always trying to protect me,” she says. “Iruka-sensei and Sasuke and- and Neji even died because of it. And now you are-”

“I’m not dead, am I, “ Kakashi reminds her. “Nor grievously injured.”

“But you’re stuck with me.”

Kakashi hums. “Strange. From my perspective, you’re stuck with me.”

Naruto digs her head into his shoulder a little harder, like his dogs might whenever they are looking for affection. “You’re not so bad.”

Something warm blooms inside of Kakashi’s ribcage, settling low in his belly and spreading all the way to his fingertips, a bit like drinking tea on a cold day.

It’s easy, then, to turn his face just a little and press his mouth against the top of her head.

“I know a thing about self-sacrifice and survivor’s guilt,” he tells her, nothing but a low murmur. “Trust me when I say: this isn’t it.”

Sasuke’s letter remains sitting on the table, still unfolded, still unanswered, but momentarily forgotten, and perhaps that is alright for now.

𑽎

There is a mission to Suna that will take her away from the village for two full weeks, and for days before she excitedly chatters about getting to see Gaara and his siblings. 

Kakashi misses her the moment she sets foot out of the house, and the feeling only gets worse as the hours progress. At work, he is malcontent enough that Shikamaru notices and sends him home early, because they are not getting any work done with him like this anyway.

At home, however, it is worse because there is even less to distract him here. He tries to read some, but all his novels seem to taunt him with how they will all get their Happily Ever After. He gets out his carving tools once more, half-heartedly hacks away at a piece of wood, until he gives up and just chucks it into the courtyard where he won’t have to look at it anymore.

Finally, in the evening, hoping to rid this body of its persistent tension, he takes a long, hot shower, and takes himself in hand. He tries to keep it strictly business, stroking himself with short, efficient strokes, but his mind still wanders where it is not supposed to go. 

When he finally comes, intense enough to leave him short of breath, it feels like capitulating at the end of an arduous fight. He had tried, hadn’t he, and yet he hadn’t been strong enough. 

Once the evidence of his shame has been washed down the drain, he towels himself dry and gets dressed in his sleep clothes. Then, he summons his dogs for company.

Pakkun gives him a long, dour look.

“Human relations are needlessly complicated,” is his eventual verdict, 

They are, Kakashi agrees silently. Which is precisely why he doesn’t plan on complicating them any further. 

“Are you and Naru-chan going to have pups?” Biscuit asks excitedly. “Bull said so.”

“I said no such thing,” Bull claims, with an offended expression. “I merely pointed out that it’s expected of them.”

“We would take such good care of your pups,” Biscuit promises Kakashi, sounding very earnest about it. “Human pups are so useless for so long, but we’d look after them regardless.”

“There won’t be any pups,” Kakashi tells her, only for her ears to immediately droop. “Now, who wants a sow’s ear?”

“Oh, oh, me!” Biscuit yips, easily distracted, and the others soon join in on the chorus. Pakkun is the only one who shows some reserve, his knowing eyes still tracking Kakashi.

“There’s a chance of getting hurt either way,” he points out quietly, even as the rest of the pack is busy with their chewwies. “Might as well try for the outcome you hope for.”

A dog is giving him love advice. What has Kakashi’s life come to?

The next two weeks drag on endlessly, thick and slow like molasses. Until one evening, Kakashi steps into the house to find her sandals kicked into the corner of the genkan. 

He lets out a measured breath.

“I am home,” he calls out, and Naruto sticks her head out of the kitchen. Her skin is tanner than it was before, her hair bleached by the sun, and her smile is equally radiant.

“Welcome home!” she says, and a missing puzzle piece slots into place.

𑽎

Utatane Koharu catches him off guard at the worst possible moment, namely when he is standing by the memorial, lost in his thoughts.

She actually manages to sneak up on him, shriveled hag that she is, but then again, she had also been a student of Senju Tobirama, and he knows better than to underestimate her.

“Rokudaime-sama,” he says, her voice close enough that he very nearly flinches in surprise, his fingers itching for a weapon. But he recognizes her voice, and that is luckily enough to stall his hand. 

“Koharu-sama,” he returns, with a small incline of his head.

She is watching him with small, keen eyes, and it feels like ants crawling over her skin. Then she glances away, toward the memorial, folding her hands for a prayer. 

Kakashi hasn’t actually prayed here in many years, and he doesn’t think he will pick up the habit again. He wonders what and who she is actually praying for. The Nidaime and Sandaime, most likely. The husband and daughter she lost in the Third War. He doesn’t know whether she ever had any gennin of her own, or what might have become of them.

But her prayer is short and so is the reprieve Kakashi gets from it. 

“I am hearing favorable things about you and Uzumaki Naruto,” she informs him, and he doesn’t quite know what to make of her so pointedly using Naruto’s full name. Is it a sign that she does recognize Naruto as a person and a hero in her own right? Or is she simply hinting at how she is very much aware of how the marriage is only a farce, to keep her and Homura off their backs? “Your visit at the Academy was well received. As were certain other public appearances you have made. The people appreciate you presenting a united front.”

It is rather the opposite of what Kakashi had expected, both from her and from the citizens. Had there truly been no nay-sayers, no venomous tongues that voiced their complaints?

“I only have the village’s best interest at heart,” Kakashi says, his own tone mellow and unassailable. 

Koharu smiles, thin-lipped and wrinkly like a raisin. 

“You are enjoying married life, then?” she asks. “And the duties that come with it?”

Have you fucked her yet, she wants to know, and a fist clenches around Kakashi’s ribcage.

She has the audacity to ask this in the cemetery where Naruto’s parents are laid to rest, a fact that almost leaves Kakashi at a loss for words.

He has to be careful, he realizes. If he is too blatant about the fact that the marriage was never even consummated and that no children would be born of the union, she might find it cause enough to interfere in Naruto’s life even further. Restrict Naruto’s movements, as she had once done before. Not allow her to take any missions outside of the village, to make her focus on producing some off-spring. 

Pregnancy is a fragile state, and many a kunoichi suffers a miscarriage if a mission turns out to be too strenuous. In most clans, having multiple children is a rarity, and age gaps between siblings tend to be larger than for civilians. It is also one of the reasons why there were male than female shinobi; many families want their daughters to remain safe because otherwise they run the risk of having an entire generation wiped out.  

“A forest isn’t planted in a day,” Kakashi says vaguely, hoping it will be enough to get Koharu off his case. But she only raises a plucked eyebrow.

“And yet, one must start by planting a single seed,” she emphasizes, as though he were some prize bull expected to mount a heifer of their choice. As though Naruto were truly nothing by a vessel, whether of the kyuubi or her future children.

Kakashi’s patience - and caution - snaps like a string.

“I would ask you to show some respect, Koharu-sama,” he says, the words as sharp as the edge of a katana. “You are talking about my wife.”

At that, Koharu’s lips purse but then, surprisingly, she smiles once more, a cryptic little thing.

“Oh course, Rokudaime-sama,” she says, and takes her leave with the suggestion of a polite bow.

𑽎

When he wakes in the middle of the night, his body covered in cold sweat, he thinks that it must have been another nightmare. He hasn’t had one in a while, or at least he doesn’t remember them in clear detail, but the feeling is still painfully familiar.

But then there is a sound out on the corridor and, a moment later, the door to his room slides open, barely more than a gap. In the ambient grey of night, Naruto’s silhouette is black like tar.

“Kakashi-sensei,” she whispers, and he sits up a little, humming quietly in response.

“I had a bad dream,” she explains. “Can I sleep here tonight?”

He should tell her no. Should tell her no because she sounded so childlike just now and she needs to learn to deal with this like a grown-up, which is to say bottle up all emotions and never acknowledge them to another soul. No, because he has nightmares, too, and what might he do to her when he lashes out, his subconscious interpreting the unknown presence in his sacred space as a threat? 

But he is tired and weak, and so he just flips back his blanket in silent invitation. Naruto slides the door closed, softly, and moves toward him on silent feet. She goes down onto her knees and then slots her body onto the futon. 

It’s way too narrow to be a truly comfortable fit for either of them, and she automatically rolls onto her side, her back to him. Like this, they are entirely too close and Kakashi fights the instinct to hold his breath when he lowers his head onto the pillow once more. 

It’s fine, he tells himself. They are married and sharing a bed, and this means absolutely nothing.

In the darkness, Naruto’s hand finds his wrist, pulling his arm so it rests across the dip of her waist.

“That’s better,” she murmurs, sounding halfway asleep already. 

Kakashi stays awake for a long time after, listening to the cicadas chirping outside, just behind the paper-thin walls. Whatever nightmare he had does not return.

𑽎

The following morning, he wakes feeling unusually warm. The length of his body is pressed along Naruto’s, practically curled around her, her head tucked under his chin so that her hair tickles his nose. With each exhale, her breath hits his knuckles where she is somehow holding his hand like a stuffed animal, cradling it against her chest. 

It’s not exactly a comfortable position for him. It is made even more uncomfortable by how his forearm is nestled between her breasts, while his hard cock is pressed up against the cleft of her ass. Neither their sleep pants nor the fabric of her shirt are nearly enough to disguise the points of contact, the heat that has built up between their bodies.

Kakashi can count on one hand the times he has woken up in bed with another person before, and it had never been in such intimate embrace. Had he really moved closer to her like that, without being aware of it? 

Very slowly, he pulls his arm free. Then, he rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. By the light coming from outside, he can tell that it’s past the time he usually gets up. For a few more minutes, he remains like this, willing both his heartbeat and his erection into submission.

Only then does he push himself up and go to run through his kata, outside on the veranda, like he does every morning. By the time he returns inside, the futon is empty, and Kakashi quickly hides in the bathroom, hoping a cold shower will calm him down. 

When he walks into the kitchen later, it is to find her making breakfast. She’s still wearing the same white sleep shirt, oversized and threatening to slip off her shoulder. Underneath the hem, the garish orange of what must be boxershorts peek out. Her feet are bare, her hair is up in a messy bun. At the nape of her neck, stray hairs curl up invitingly.

For a long moment, Kakashi stares, transfixed, but she must have heard him come in, because she finally glances over her shoulder.

“Morning,” she greets. “You hungry?”

Kakashi clears his throat, blames it on the early morning. “What are you making?”

“Just rice with egg,” she says, twisting aside a little to show him. Tamago kake gohan is one of the few dishes she feels confident to prepare by herself. “You want one yolk or two?”

“Two,” he says, seating himself at his usual place at the table. It’s already set, a steaming pot of tea placed in the middle. Kakashi looks around, belatedly remembering that he needs his meds, and-

“Catch,” Naruto says, smoothly tossing him the pill bottle from where he must have left it on the counter.

“... thanks,” he mutters, and then just watches her work.

𑽎

Chapter Text

For many years, he had blamed his father for taking his life in the house, instead of simply stringing himself up in the woods somewhere. It would have been neater, for one, and Kakashi probably wouldn’t have been the one to find him, forced to deal with both the mess and the memories. 

Kakashi had been six years old then, and he had seen his fair share of corpses already, had killed a great many people, too. But he only knew the protocol on how to deal with fallen enemies or comrades. He did not know what to do about fathers who slid knives into their own bellies to make their guts spill out.

So he had taken himself to the Hokage Tower, barely tall enough to look over the reception desk at the front.

“Hello,” he had said calmly. “I would like to report the White Fang’s suicide.”

He had been only a little younger than Sasuke when he lost his clan. However, Sasuke had been driven by the need to avenge the slaughter. Kakashi, on the other hand, had no murderer to hunt down. Just the vague instinct that he must make up for his father’s failings and his cowardice by becoming a greater shinobi than him. 

At some point, though, Kakashi realized that his father hadn’t done it to hurt him, but that he must have been in such a state of mind that his continued existence would have seemed like the greater burden to both of them. It was probably around the time that Kakashi himself had started eyeing some sturdy tree branches with a little too much interest. 

In the grand scheme of things, his father’s suicide is probably not the worst thing that happened in Kakashi’s life. There was Obito under a rock, and his fist through Rin’s chest, Minato’s heroic sacrifice, and Kushina’s body, emptied of her child and the kyuubi and her last breath. 

Being married to Naruto, in comparison, feels more like a boon than a punishment, and somehow that is scarier than anything that had come before. 

All his life, Kakashi had struggled with the concept of letting go. For maybe the first time, he wonders what it would be like to reach out and hold on. 

𑽎

Summers in the Land of Fire are long and vibrant. The sun is never as unforgiving as in the Land of Sand, and the rains are rarely as torrential as in Water.

Finally, though, the heat breaks.

They are sitting on the veranda, playing cards, a plate of dango between them, and Naruto keeps licking her sticky fingers and getting spit and sugar all over the card deck, but Kakashi doesn’t mind so much.

Their laundry is drying on the line she has strung up across the courtyard, the clothes fluttering in the mild wild, already dry. Overhead, clouds are passing by, providing moments of reprieve from the sun.

Naruto is chewing on her fingernails, deliberating over the hand she has been dealt, when a shadow falls over them once more. This time, however, it stays.

Kakashi doesn’t even pay it any attention at first and neither does Naruto, even when the first drops of rain start falling. Then, from one second to the next, the sky opens up and it begins to pour.

“The laundry!” Naruto yelps, tossing her cards aside to jump up instead. With a look over her shoulder, she adds, “Help me, will ya?”

So Kakashi joins her and together they make short work of it, haphazardly tossing the clothes into the basket. But, even with their quick reflexes, the rain is heavy enough that, by the time Kakashi steps onto the veranda to deposit the basket there, he is somewhat drenched. 

He sorts through the basket for a moment, picking out anything that will need to be hung up again, but then he looks back at Naruto. She’s still standing in the middle of the courtyard, white pebbles underneath her bare feet, and her head is tipped back to welcome the rain. Kakashi just watches her and the way the water flattens her hair, droplets caught in her lashes, eyes closed and lips parted. 

She must feel his gaze on her because, without opening her eyes, she calls out, “It feels really nice!”

It’s an observation as much as an invitation, and Kakashi’s feet seem to carry him off the veranda all by themselves. She’s right, it turns out. The rain does feel good, cool and pleasant, running down along his face to drip down his neck, onto his breastbone where his jinbei jacket has fallen open. 

But of course, she had an ulterior motive in luring him into the tempest. 

He’s barely reached her side when she grabs him by the shoulders, trying to make him lose his footing. He didn’t expect it, but he also wouldn’t fall for a cheap move like that, and he resists, tries to wrest free, makes her stumble instead.

In the end, they fall together, straight into their little pond. It’s shallow but also fortunately wide enough that the goldfish can quickly dart out of the way. Naruto just laughs, immediately beginning to splash at Kakashi instead, and he takes a faceful of cold pond water. Her shoulders are still shaking with mirth when he catches her wrist to still her. His other hand comes up to cradle her chin and tip her face up toward him. 

When he kisses her, she tastes of sweat and dango and rain, and her breath hitches, lips parting with a gasp.

He pulls back, takes in her wide eyes and the red in her cheeks, and his guts clench in the certainty that he has made the wrong move.

“I shouldn’t have-” he begins, a feeble apology, and he tries to push away, climb out of the pond and run until his legs give up. But then her hand shoots forward, bandaged fingers clenching in the fabric of his jacket.

She still looks stunned and woefully out of her depth, but her gaze drops down to his philtrum, his lips, his beauty mark.

When he leans in again, gently grasping her face in his hands, he does it slowly, allowing her to escape. Instead, her eyes slide shut.

Sitting in the rain, he kisses her hungrily, longingly. She makes helpless little noises, her mouth opening for his tongue, her head tilting to the side, even as she holds on to him with an iron fist.

Her other hand comes up to find his damp hair, and she tries to maneuver herself around, to get closer, climb into his lap perhaps. But they are still sitting in the pond and it’s not exactly the most pleasant part of the experience, so Kakashi slides his hands under her thighs and easily hoists her up. 

Their mouths separate, but their eyes remain locked as he carries her back to the veranda. The cards and the laundry are forgotten and, when Kakashi sets her down again, it is only so that they can rid each other of their soaked clothes. His jacket goes first, then her tanktop. Her nipples press through the fabric of her sports bra, and he lets himself stare down her cleavage as they both fumble with the knot of his belt.

They drop their clothes where they stand, uncaring whether the wet fabric will warp or stain the wood. Once her denim shorts have come off, he picks her up again, her strong legs wound around his hips, arms locked behind the back of his neck.

He slides the door shut with his foot, and then carries her to her room where he sets her down on the futon, heedless of their damp skin and hair. She twists out of her bra, so fast she nearly whacks him in the face, and then he kisses down along the neck, between the valley of her breasts. 

“We should- talk about this-” he manages to say, even with her soft skin against his mouth, his palm cupped over her flesh.

Yet Naruto frantically shakes her head. 

“Less talking, more touching,” she insists, brazenly pushing her chest into his face, and the cautious, rational part of Kakashi’s brain decides to go absent without official leave.

He takes one brown nipple into his mouth, sucks on it, worries at it with careful teeth, and she whines, arches against him. While one hand supports the base of her skull, his other slides between her thighs to part them. Her underwear is already completely soaked from their impromptu bath but, when he touches her, her breath stutters and she bucks her hips.

She doesn’t quite seem to know where to put her own hands, aimlessly roaming over his shoulders, his chest, his sides, and something about that tells him she is probably not very experienced. 

It surprises him. She’s had so many boys and men willing to put down their lives for her. She had traveled with Jiraiya, of all people. Surely, at some point, opportunities must have arisen. 

In fact, the threat of rape always hung over a shinobi’s head, and thus many of them preferred to get their first time out of the way as soon as possible, just so a potential enemy would not get to hold that over them as well.

Kakashi himself had been only fourteen, recently instated as an agent of ANBU and certainly not in a mental or emotional state to make any sound calls regarding what constituted as healthy sexual behavior. He had henge’d himself into an older man, picked up a woman from a dive bar, and accompanied her home. 

Most of his experiences were of a similar nature: anonymous hookups with civilians because he was too paranoid to let another shinobi get close to him, not just because they could get him killed but also because associating with him could get them killed in turn.

He had always been a high-profile player. Any lover of his would quickly become a target for his many enemies.

Naruto herself, however, already is a target in her own right, and has been for as long as Kakashi can remember. In that way, she is a surprisingly safe choice for a lover, especially since they were already married anyway.

They grind against each other for some time, kissing and touching, and Naruto finally works up the courage to slip her hand into Kakashi’s underwear and palm at his cock. The angle is awkward when she takes him in hand, giving him some aborted little tugs. She’s clearly lacking in skill, but his erection still strains under her attention, fluid gathering at the slit. 

He groans, buries his face against the side of her neck.

“What?” she asks, sounding a little worried, like maybe she had done something wrong.

“... I don’t have any condoms,” he mutters, feeling her pulse against his lips. Because he hadn’t planned for this. He hadn’t allowed himself to plan for this.

“Oh,” Naruto says simply. “Um. Sakura-chan put me on the pill a while ago?”

At those words, Kakashi almost chokes on his spit. “A while ago when?”

“Uh, around the time we went to that fancy restaurant? She was kinda insistent about it.”

“You’ve been taking it regularly?” he ensures, because she does seem like the type to just forget sometimes, but she nods vigorously. 

“Yeah. So.” She cants her hips up, trying to get some friction, and Kakashi folds like a house of cards. 

He slides her panties off her, her hips wriggling the whole time, which is frankly not very helpful, but quite endearing. Within moments, she is finally bared under his gaze, tan lines, blonde hair and skin that doesn’t scar.

A belated wave of shyness must overcome her, because she throws an arm over her face, poorly hiding the flush that goes all the way from her cheeks down to her clavicle.

“‘s not fair,” she complains, the words muffled. “I wanna see you, too.”

So Kakashi pushes down his own underwear, kicking it aside, feeling pleased when Naruto’s hungry gaze drops down to his cock.

He places his palms against her bent knees, but doesn’t quite part them yet.

“Are you sure?” he asks, his breath sounding ragged to his own ears. “We could just-”

Naruto’s legs open so fast, the momentum nearly makes him topple on top of her.

“Come ooon,” she whines, and it’s not so different from how she always tries to bully him into sparring matches or buying her food, as though this were just a natural extension of their usual dynamic. “I don’t wanna wait anymore.”

“Alright,” he relents, one arm braced against the futon while he grasps the base of his erection with the other. He guides himself toward her entrance, feeling the head of his cock nudge against her wetness.

A little sound hitches out of Naruto, all voracious excitement, and then he slowly sinks into her. Her head falls back, chin pointed toward the ceiling as she breathes through the intrusion, while Kakashi soothingly kisses along her jawline.

He doesn’t quite remember the last time he had sex. It must have been years ago, before he even became Hokage, but the details are unclear. His medication had severely inhibited his libido for a while, and his workload smothered what little was left. So perhaps it is just a side effect of his long bout of celibacy that this moment feels so momentous. 

For a minute or so, he gives both of them time to adjust, just grinding into her, but then Naruto’s hands land on his hipbones to push him back. He obeys, drawing almost all the way out, which is when she pulls him forward once more. 

“Yeah,” she mouths, once he has found the right angle and a steady pace to fuck her with long, achingly slow strokes. “Yeah, like that.”

Her hair has come loose, fanning out against the futon. It’s mostly dry because she had been wearing it in a bunch before, and Kakashi cannot help but think of rays of light radiating outward from the center of the sun. 

Fingers digging into the meat of her ass, he speeds up and pulls her toward himself with each thrust. Naruto moans in response, spreading her legs even further. One of her hands sneaks between their bodies, finding her clit, and her eyebrows knit together in concentration as she begins to get herself off. 

For a while, there is just the cacophony of the pouring rain outside hitting the roof, their labored breathing, and Kakashi’s heartbeat pulsing in his ears.

It occurs to Kakashi that, almost five months in, they are finally consummating their marriage. His orgasm overwhelms him with a mixture of shame and elation.

He keeps fucking her throughout, emptying himself inside of her, face hidden against the side of her neck, and Naruto curses under her breath, her entire body tensing, and then she is coming, too.

It takes them both a moment to come down against, still desperately clutching on to each other. Kakashi only lets go when Naruto relaxes once more, head flopping down onto her pillow. 

He takes a long look at her, wishing for the first time that he still had the Sharingan so that he might engrave this loveliest of images in his mind for all eternity. As it is, though, his ordinary eyes can only linger on her flushed and sweat-damp skin, on her kiss-bitten lips, on the way her fair lashes flutter when she opens her eyes to look at him in turn.

As if reading his thoughts, Naruto takes his face between her palms, dipping his head toward her so she can press a soft kiss to the scar cutting across his eyelid, and some last war-hardened part of Kakashi crumbles in the face of her tenderness. 

“Okay, off now, you’re heavy,” she complains eventually, and together they sort out their limbs, both wincing when he finally pulls his softened cock from her, pubic hair tacky with dried slick and cum. 

When he finally rolls off her, however, Kakashi stills, arrested by another entirely unexpected sight.

Next to the futon, on the floor beside her pillow, sits the little wooden toad he had crafted her a few weeks before. Naruto had never mentioned it after he first left it in her room, and Kakashi hadn’t dared to ask. Now it looks as though, maybe, she has been handling each night before falling asleep, inhaling the sunny smell of the orange oil that had reminded him of her. 

“You kept the toad,” he cannot help but point out the obvious, and Naruto follows his gaze.

“Of course I kept him,” she says easily. “His name is Gamaki and he’s actually a cursed samurai who has to complete seven heroic feats before he can be turned back into a human.”

“Makes sense,” Kakashi agrees and wonders whether, at the end of his tale, the beleaguered samurai will get to marry a princess, too.

𑽎

Afterwards, he runs them a hot bath, to counteract the cold one in the pond. She climbs in, completely unselfconscious of her nudity, and while the tub is more than big enough to allow them to spread out, crawls right back into his arms.

He hadn’t dared to reach for her again, not knowing whether it would be appreciated after the initial overwhelming passion, but when her back leans against his chest, her head tilted back to rest on his shoulder, something in him unclenches. 

He finds a clean washcloth, dips into the water, begins to run it over her, lazily motions across her shoulders and along her arms. His free hand kneads one of her breasts and, when he kisses the side of her neck, she sighs contentedly. 

She rests her right arm on the edge of the tub, drawing Kakashi’s gaze. 

Her bandages must have come off at some point. Kakashi has never actually seen it like this before, and so he cannot help but take a closer look. It looks close enough to human skin, he supposes, except that it is milkwhite. There are no hairs on it, nor scars or any other blemishes. 

He runs his thumb over where her stump merges with the prosthetic. 

“It’s ugly,” Naruto says, quickly sliding her arm into the water, to escape Kakashi’s eyes and his touch. His own hand remains hovering in the air, lamenting the loss. 

“Is that why you keep it covered?” he wants to know, pressing a kiss to her temple instead.

“It’s part of it,” she shrugs. “People get freaked out when they see it. But also, I don’t have any fingerprints.”

“What?”

“Look,” she says, and shows him after all. Except for the lines that have formed along the palm and around the knuckles to allow her to move at all, the skin is perfectly smooth. There are no swirls on her fingertips, no pruning in the heat of the water. “I can’t really grab anything smooth or turn a page or something. The bandages help a little, because they add some friction. It’s the best solution I’ve found so far.”

The fact that Tsunade had been able to provide her with a fully functional prosthetic in the first place had been amazing enough. Of course Naruto wouldn’t want to complain about how it looks.

He has never known her to be vain, but she is still a young woman, and so it is understandable that she might be a little insecure under his scrutiny. So Kakashi takes her hand and presses a kiss to her open palm, hoping that it will convey how beautiful she still is. 

She tenses briefly, only to relax again. 

“You’re really into me, huh?” she asks, her voice somewhere between wry and amused, and Kakashi smiles against her palm.

“Only a little bit,” he quips, because that is easier than something more sincere, and she huffs.

“For ‘only a little bit’, you sure enjoyed staring at me when you thought I wasn’t looking,” she tells him. “I’m not blind, you know. I notice things.”

“Was I that obvious?” he asks, chagrined. He doesn’t remember when exactly he started looking, or even when he became aware of it. Otherwise, it might have been easier to make himself stop.

“Not obvious necessarily,” Naruto corrects. The fingers of her other hand are drawing patterns into the water, making it ripple. “It was more about how you suddenly barely looked at me at all anymore, but when you did, it was… different.”

Kakashi bites the inside of his cheek.

“I didn’t mean to- I never wanted-” His words fail him, but he makes himself continue anyway. “If you want me to stop-”

“Kakashi.” She twists around to look at him, staring him dead in the eye. “What gave you the idea that I wanted you to stop?”  

“I- You- I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

“I crawled into your bed at night,” she reminds him, and Kakashi flounders.

“You said you had a nightmare.”

“I did,” she confirms. “And I know how to deal with them by myself. I just didn’t want to.”

How is it so easy for her to ask for help, ask for affection, especially considering she had been denied both for so long? By all means, with the upbringing she had, she should be more jaded and skittish than him. 

But perhaps it is because she was alone for so long that she has learned to fight for the things she truly wanted. She turned the entire village from shunning to adoring her. Of course she would not have let something as minor as Kakashi’s own insecurities stop her.

“Can we stop talking now?” she asks, once more curling up in his arms. “I’m tired, and we still have to fold the laundry and clean up outside. And then I want to eat. I’m starving.”

“We did engage in some strenuous activities,” Kakashi agrees, and then follows her wish and shuts his mouth. They stay in the bath until the water turns cold. 

𑽎

He’s half-asleep, the last bit of his consciousness that is still clinging to the waking world only vaguely aware of the sensations that envelop him. The patter of rain outside and the subdued sound of the cicadas. Her steady heartbeat in his ear, where his head rests on her chest. Her fingers are carding through his hair at his temple.

Her hand falls away, and Kakashi stirs. 

He grumbles, low in his chest, no actual words coming out of his mouth.

Underneath him, her ribcage shakes with suppressed laughter.

“You’re like a dog,” she murmurs but goes back to petting him anyway.

And he is a dog, isn’t he? A stray, half-feral thing that was more afraid of affection than of violence because the latter was so much more familiar. 

But, perhaps, even an old dog can learn new tricks. 

Only a few seconds later, he is asleep.

𑽎

Shikamaru cuts off mid-sentence, but it still takes a moment for Kakashi to notice and look over at him.

Shikamaru is openly staring at him, one of those looks on his face that he generally only reserves for the most confounding of problems.

“Is something the matter?” Kakashi asks, and Shikamaru’s frown deepens.

“That’s what I am trying to figure out,” he says. “Did something happen with you?”

“No?” Kakashi says, resisting the urge to sit up straighter. It would just look suspicious. “Why do you ask?”

“You’ve been in a strangely good mood,” Shikamaru explains. “It’s throwing me off.”

“Have I?” Kakashi feigns ignorance.

“Yeah,” Shikamaru says pointedly. “An hour ago you were humming to yourself. While doing paperwork.”

Had he really done that? Kakashi hadn’t realized. But it is true that work had seemed more bearable than usual, that the minutes didn’t seem to drag on endlessly.

The truth is that he had taken care that there was no evidence left on his body, no hickeys or scratch marks, most of his skin covered by his robes, his hat, his mask. But he had not considered that he might give himself away in other ways.

He is in a pretty good mood, he supposes. He had slept well last night, better than he has in years, probably, and this morning Naruto had stopped him at the door to slip her tongue into his mouth, before drawing back with a grin to pull his mark over his face. Of course both of these facts would be reflected in his general attitude.

As an accomplished shinobi, he should know better than to broadcast his feelings quite so obviously, but it’s a little too late for that now.

“It’s a nice day,” Kakashi claims simply, only for Shikamaru to throw a meaningful look toward the window, where the drizzle has started up again. 

“If you say so,” he says skeptically, and then taps his finger against the clipboard he is holding. “Do try to pay attention, though. I’m not going to go through this again.”

Kakashi sighs, mildly chastised. If he works diligently today, maybe he can go home a little early.

𑽎

When he steps into the living room, she is huddled up on the giant orange bean bag she had recently acquired, complaining that he didn’t even own a sofa. She’s got a book propped up against her thighs, one of her hands conspicuously placed against the v between her legs, though he suspects she hadn’t even noticed that she was doing it. 

“What are you reading?” he asks, though he has a suspicion. It is confirmed when she flashes him the cover and it turns out to be an Icha Icha volume. One of his own, judging by its beaten-up and dogeared state.

“You and Icha Icha?” he teases. If she is actually enjoying it, he is going to turn the tables on her and get revenge for all the times she made fun of him for it.

“Ero-Sennin made me read them”, she huffs. “Allegedly to improve my reading speed and memory. Always ended up quizzing me on the most random details to check whether I really paid attention to everything.”

“Unorthodox method.”

“Well, why did you read them?” she counters.

He steps closer, hunkers down beside her. He places a hand on top of her belly, and once more he is surprised by these more casually intimate touches happening so easily between them. Cuddling in bed before sleep, massaging her feet after a mission, letting her playfully bite at his asscheeks after sex.

“Hm, your father always supported Jiraiya-dono’s writing. I don’t suppose he was very interested in the filthier ones, but he bought them nevertheless. Originally, I think I started reading because I hoped a great ninja like Jiraiya-dono would disclose some secrets of the trade that I could learn from.”

“Did you?” she asks, skeptical.

“I suppose so,” Kakashi allows and grins vaguely. “Just not the trade I had been aiming for.”

She snorts and gently swats at his face, but he merely catches her fingers in her mouth, kissing and biting. He doesn’t really mean anything by it, but then he notices how her expression has grown a little vacant, her gaze dropped down to where his tongue is curling around her fingertips.

He pulls back, nudges his cheek into her palm instead. Then he takes the book that has fallen closed in her lap and sets it aside

“Did you have a favorite Icha Icha story, then?” he asks and, anticipating her answer, adds, “Gutsy Ninja doesn’t count.”

At that, she blows her cheeks up in annoyance, but her gaze slides to the left, which tells him she is probably about to lie. 

“C’mon,” he says, leaning close so his nose brushes her temple. Into her ear he whispers, “Tell me.”

She grumbles a little, clearly embarrassed, but then she gives in.

“There’s this one…” she says. “ Milk and Blood. Do you know it?”

“Remind me,” Kakashi prompts, even though he remembers very well.

Naruto shuffles around on the bean bag, rolling onto her side so that she is facing him, her head pillowed on her arm.

“There’s this princess, right, and she falls in love with the wrong guy, and when her father finds out that she gave up her virginity, he means to marry her off to this random lord,” she summarizes somewhat inelegantly. “But on the way there, she runs away instead, only to be accosted by an enemy mercenary sent to kill her. And she fights back at first but then, when he’s about to strike the killing blow, she lowers her hands in surrender and says, ‘Better to die like this than to live as a slave,’ and he decides to rescue her instead.”

Yes, Kakashi remembers. Not Jiraiya’s best work, in his opinion, mostly due to the convoluted plot. But some other aspects of it had been sublime.

“What was your favorite part?” he asks, his hand running from her shoulder down to the dip of her waist where his fingers begin to creep under her shirt.

“The fight scene near the end,” she claims, not even attempting to sound convincing.

“Uh-huh,” he says, finding the ticklish spot just beneath her ribs. “And beside that?”

She squirms, both because of his fingers and his questions, and the threat of tickling torture is enough to make her cave. “When they go to the onsen in the mountains.”

“What did you like about it?”

Naruto’s cheeks are faintly pink and she closes her eyes, probably so she won’t have to look at him when she confesses.

“That he lets her be in control,” she explains. “He’s stronger than her and more experienced, but he doesn’t do a single thing without her allowing it. Even when- Even when she cannot put it into words.”

It’s more or less what he had expected her to say. The scene in the onsen had been the height of eroticism in how the princess called the shots and the mercenary was there to service her. A confirmation of their social hierarchy and yet an inversion of their gender roles.

Kakashi brings his face close to Naruto’s once more, his breath ghosting over her lips.

“May I kiss you, hime?” he asks, like the mercenary does, and she just tilts her chin up to meet him.

So he kisses her, slowly, drags his mouth across hers and then pushes his tongue inside. She makes a noise, deep in the back of her throat, sinks her fingers into his hair. Then, she shifts underneath him so that their bodies can slot together more comfortably.

Underneath her shirt, his left hand slides toward her chest.

“May I touch you, hime?” he breathes against her lips, and she nods, letting him ruck up the fabric, exposing her firm belly. 

He cups her breast through her bra, squeezes it a little harder than the times he has done this before, and her breath catches, pain and pleasure both. His other hand moves lower, undoing the button and zipper of her pants. 

She goes along with it, wriggling until he gets both her pants and underwear off her, spreads her legs just enough for his head to fit in between.

“May I taste you, hime?” he pleads, his mouth against the damp seam of her cunt, and her only response is a needy whine, her hips hitching up toward him.

So he eats her out enthusiastically, the lower half of his face quickly covered in a mix of his saliva and her slick, his tongue digging into her heat. He’s got a thumb on her clit, recreating the rhythm she seems to prefer, and her thighs tighten around his skull in response. 

Like this, it happens fast. She arches, claws one hand against his scalp to press him even closer, and lets out a long, guttural moan. Kakashi keeps licking at her, even as her body trembles and her cunt spasms, and he only stops once the tension leaves her and she flops down almost bonelessly.

He presses a last kiss to her, wipes a palm over his mouth. 

“Good?” he asks, his voice rough, and she laughs weakly.

“Good,” she agrees, vaguely patting his hair, even as her thighs slip off his shoulders. “Didn’t know the copycat thing would apply to this as well.”

“A good student always pays close attention,” he informs her wisely, and rests his head against her warm belly.

𑽎

She’s working in the garden once more, removing withered blossoms and leaves. It’s just regular maintenance and pruning, easily done compared to the heavy labor of taming the jungle that had taken hold of the courtyard before she started taking care of it.

“Do you need help?” Kakashi offers of his own volition. The garden may have become her domain, but he has been enjoying all the benefits without doing any of the work. 

She hums and sits back on her haunches, shielding her eyes to take a quick look around.

“You could clean the pond of debris,” she finally suggests. “Remove dead leaves and stuff.”

“That’s something that needs to be done?” he asks, surprised. After all, this is not something anyone is doing in a proper lake. Then again, he supposes, no one is pruning the branches in a forest either.

“Too much detritus sucks out the oxygen,” she tells him. “Which would kill the fish, obviously. In small bodies of water like this, it can happen really quickly.”

“It’s a lot of upkeep,” Kakashi muses aloud. If he had known this beforehand, he is not sure he would have thought the pond a good idea.

“Of course it is,” Naruto says, strangely wise. “All good things take a bit of work.”

Where’s the impatient kid who wanted instantaneous results and who could barely sit through a simple lesson on chakra theory without bursting at the seams? Where’s the girl who complained about any sort of extra work that she didn’t deem necessary?

Instead of questioning her further, Kakashi goes and gets the hand net, standing by the pond to fish out the dead leaves and algae as she had instructed. It’s simple work and oddly meditative. He draws wide circles into the water, careful to avoid the goldfish and the tadpoles that have recently joined them.

Unexpectedly, he is struck by a memory of his father doing exactly this, many years ago. He must have done it often, but somehow Kakashi had forgotten about it. Strangely, though, it doesn’t hurt. Instead, he finds comfort in the thought that, even after all this time, he still discovers things that connect him to his parents.

When he is done, he just stands still for a long moment, watching his tremulous reflection on the water’s surface. He’s little more than a smudge of colors, his outlines vague and fluid, changing with each ripple of the water.

At some point, Naruto comes to stand behind him. She goes up on her tiptoes to hook her chin over his shoulder, arms circling around his midsection.

“Good job,” she praises, right into his ear, and then fits her mouth against the side of his neck, kissing and sucking.

“Are you trying to give me a hickey?” he asks, wryly amused, but he does willingly tilt his head to the side to give her better access.

She makes a pleased noise in the back of her throat and sucks with renewed vigor.

“Mine,” she declares once she is done, punctuating it with one last kiss, and Kakashi has no reason to disagree with that claim.

𑽎

Together, time passes quickly and easily and, before long, summer is mellowing down again, its bright edges softening. 

On the morrow of Kakashi’s birthday, she wakes him by climbing on top of him, sensually grinding her ass against his crotch. So they fuck, quick and dirty, because the Hokage has to get to work on time, even on his birthday.

“Hm, good morning, hime,” he mutters afterwards and buries his face in her lush hair, the last aftershocks of her climax trembling through her, though the addition of the nickname still makes her fluster. 

But she is a princess, by blood if not by upbringing, and a part of Kakashi enjoys the thought of treating her like one, if only in the privacy of their home. Outside, he may be her Hokage, at least for the time being, but here he is wholly dedicated to serving her. 

“Morning,” Naruto returns, and she sounds a little like she would really like to go right back to sleep, nuzzling her nose against his collar bone. “Happy birthday.”

He’s thirty-five now, which still sickens him a little, considering how many people he knew that never made it to this age. He prays that Naruto will. She’ll be turning twenty-one only three weeks from now, and he hasn’t yet thought of a good present for her. It would have to be something special, but he’s never been particularly good at gift-giving.

“You should leave a shadow clone here,” she tells him later, when she accompanies him to the door after a hurried breakfast, and Kakashi frowns mildly.

“What for?”

“Trust me,” she says, with an intense look in her eyes, and so he obeys and creates a clone who remains behind in similar confusion.

Two hours later, in the middle of trying to solve a conflict between two Aburame, Kakashi feels the clone dissolve and he is hit by the memory of Naruto sinking onto her knees in front of him.

‘Birthday blowjob,’ she had declared with an eager grin, making short work of his pants, and then had proceeded to suck him off with little finesse and a lot of enthusiasm. The clone had vanished the moment orgasm hit and, in its turn, Kakashi is left breathless and overheated.

“Hokage-sama?” Aburame Toshi asks, concerned, and Kakashi has to wave him off.

“Just a dizzy spell,” he claims, willing his blood to slow down. “Please continue.”

He vows to get his revenge on Naruto once he makes it home in the evening. And yet, when he finally gets there, she distracts him with another surprise.

“I used the last strawberries from the garden,” she explains, putting a piece of shortcake onto a plate. “I’ve never really baked before, so Sakura-chan helped me with this.”

And then she obviously didn’t stick around to actually taste the fruit of her labor. If there had been any doubt left about whether Sakura knew how much his and Naruto’s relationship had progressed, this quenches the last of it. 

And it is a proper relationship, Kakashi supposes. Even when she is on an away mission, he spends every night in her room, because the futon smells like her, and it makes the solitude easier to bear. They exchange kisses without preamble, handle their chores like a well-oiled machine, and talk about whatever comes to mind, no matter how serious or frivolous.

It’s so strangely easy that Kakashi is almost suspicious of it, because nothing in his life has ever been easy.

He wants it, he realizes, when he watches Naruto frolic around with Uhei and Biscuit. He wants this existence that is more than walking on coals and eggshells.

The epiphany feels less like stepping off the edge of a cliff and more like the sun tentatively peeking past the Eastern horizon.

He doesn’t want to annul their marriage as soon as the chance arises. He doesn’t want Naruto to move out and move on with her life. He loves her, not just like a friend or a parttime paramour, but as a husband loves a wife.

With a snuffle, Pakkun looks up from where he had been dozing on Kakashi’s lap, so perhaps he had heard the quickening of Kakashi’s heart. The dog follows Kakashi’s gaze over to where Naruto is playing parkour amid the rest of the pack, and then he turns back to Kakashi to size him up with a long, knowing look.

“Took you long enough,” he says gruffly and settles back down to continue his nap.

𑽎

Chapter Text

Strictly speaking, Sakura does not need to come by personally to drop off her monthly report on the newly instated Children’s Mental Health Ward at Konoha Hospital, but of course she must welcome any opportunity to go and bother Kakashi. 

“So,” she says accordingly, once she has given him a brief verbal summary of the report, because she knows he will just approve everything without reading it, and he knows that it’s because he can trust her when it comes to official business like this, so he doesn’t need to hound her over every little detail. He cannot trust her with other things. “How was your birthday cake?”

“Delicious,” he says, closing the manila folder with the report and setting it aside for Shikamaru to file away later. “You should have stayed to try some of it.”

“Oh no, I don’t think Naruto is fond of sharing,” Sakura says, her eyes twinkling, and Kakashi sighs.

“What do you want, Sakura?”

“Why are you still trying to pretend like there is nothing going on between you two?” she demands. “You think I don’t know what you have been getting up to? We’re girls, we tell each other everything.”

Kakashi blanches. “Everything?”

“Well, I stopped her when she was about to describe certain anatomical details that I can do without,” Sakura huffs, her cheeks going pink. “But yes, everything. Naruto cannot keep a secret to save her life, and if she didn’t get to talk to someone about this, she would likely explode. You’re her first serious boyfriend.”

I am her husband, Kakashi thinks faintly, and does that not complicate the matter just a little bit?

“I am her teacher,” he says instead, watching Sakura’s nose crinkle in response.

“Okay, first of all, you were our official teacher for, like, six months, and then she was gone for three years,” she points out. “I mean, I at least saw you around the village sometimes, but she was sixteen by the time she got back. And I doubt that’s when you started lusting after her.”

“No,” he hurries to say. “I never would have- It never even occurred to me.”

“Exactly,” Sakura nods. “And, no offense, you weren’t a bad teacher, but you also weren’t… all there, if that makes sense. I couldn’t articulate it back then, but it always felt a little bit like you were keeping us at arm’s length. Like maybe… maybe you knew it wasn’t going to last.”

That’s because, in Kakashi’s experience, good things did not last. Good things stayed just long enough for you to get comfortable, to let down your guard and get up your hope, only for the rug to be pulled out from under your feet.

He couldn’t be like Gai, who all but adopted Lee, or like Kurenai who hosted sleepovers and movie nights to improve team spirit. Kakashi showed up to training, always late, and sometimes he treated the kids to ramen afterwards. He protected them during missions and gave them pep talks as needed. But he didn’t dare acknowledge that they were his just as much as he was theirs. 

Of course he couldn’t have foreseen that Sasuke would turn traitor. But part of him had expected that, sooner or later, one of his students would die. And worse, that he would be responsible somehow. Literally on their very first mission outside of the village, he had nearly lost both Sasuke and Naruto.

He had failed every single genin team the Sandaime sent his way. And the one trio he finally accepted because they reminded him so much of his old team, almost cost him the fragile peace of mind he had been establishing for himself.

Sasuke running away ultimately hadn’t been a terrible shock; he had dealt with too many traitors in his life for it to really rattle him anymore, and Sasuke had been both unstable and driven enough. But the way it ate up Naruto and Sakura had made Kakashi despair. Because he thought that, one way or another, it would destroy them. 

And it very nearly had. How often had Naruto and Sasuke clashed, narrowly surviving because Fate apparently wasn’t done with them yet? 

But they survived, all three of them, and Kakashi got to see them grow up into functioning adults, which meant that he didn’t see Naruto as a girl anymore, but as a woman.

“I tried to talk myself out of it,” he tells Sakura, because he needs her to understand this much. “If circumstances had been different… but she was always there.”

It’s a circular argument, of course. If he weren’t constantly basking in Naruto’s presence due to their new-found domesticity, he would be able to squish everything down and simply move on from the matter. But if they hadn’t been forced into this marriage in the first place, he likely never would have started to see her in a new light.

Yet Sakura’s expression merely softens. 

“You’re pretty gone on her, huh?” she asks, and it’s not teasing this time, just fond and a little in awe. “Definitely can’t say I saw that coming.”

“I-” Kakashi says and a part of him wants to deny it still. But what is the point? Sakura has seen through him and she, at least, will not use this knowledge against him. 

“Things are… brighter, with her around,” is what he finally settles on. “I don’t dread waking up in the morning anymore.”

At those words, Sakura smiles, but there is a dewy quality to her eyes, as though she were just as likely to shed a few tears. Of course, Kakshi has suspected for a while that she knows about his depression and the medication he takes. In fact, she was probably the one who brought her concerns to Tsunade in the first place.

“That’s good,” she says. “You deserve some happiness. Both of you do.”

Something in him trembles, small and hopeful and uncertain.

“Is that- Do I-” he fumbles, vaguely clenching his fists. “Has she said that? That she’s happy?”

“Kakashi-sensei,” Sakura says, with a small exhale that’s probably meant to be a disbelieving laugh. “Do I need to schedule you for an eye exam? She’s practically glowing.”

But isn’t she always, Kakashi wants to protest. She has always been radiant, and any spots of sadness were like clouds in the sky, enhancing the loveliness of the sun once they passed again. 

“Have some faith in yourself, hm?” Sakura tells him. “And also maybe stop acting like this is some great secret you’ve got to keep? She’s confided in me but apparently she thinks that you don’t want word getting out or something. You don’t want her to believe you’re ashamed of her, right?”

And here Sakura is, right back to scheming. Because of course she knows that if she makes Kakashi feel like he is hurting Naruto with his behavior, he cannot possibly keep doing it without feeling even worse.

“I guess I have been overly worried,” he admits. “I just don’t want anyone to think less of h-”

“Oh please,” Sakura cuts him off. “The people love her, and they love you. Anyone who knows the two of you will understand. And if anyone else gives you a hard time, just send them my way.”

And she flexes her biceps which Kakashi knows is not an idle threat.

“Thank you,” he tells her warmly, because - secret love affair or not - he is definitely glad to have her in his corner.

𑽎

They are in his office, discussing the upcoming festivities. Tsunade, Kakashi and Naruto, three generations of Hokage.

“Hmm, should we do my speech before yours or after?” Naruto muses. Tsunade and Kakashi are sitting in chairs, like normal people, but Naruto has hopped up onto the corner of Kakashi’s desk. A little bit like, if she doesn’t get to sit behind the desk yet, she may at least claim it some other way.

“After, I think,” Kakashi says, glancing away from the blue veins in Naruto’s wrist, where she’s leaning back on one hand. “You’re their heroine. They will be much more likely to sit through my boring speech, just to get a glimpse of you, hime.” 

Kakashi only realizes what he has said when Naruto immediately blushes scarlet. Tsunade, however, stills.

With a sinking feeling in his stomach, it occurs to Kakashi that Jiraiya had always called her hime as well. In fact, the princess from Milk and Blood may well have been inspired by her. 

“Tsunade-sama,” Kakashi tries, like a dog in anticipation of a beating, but when she moves again it is only to lift her finger, not her fist.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she says tightly. “Any of it.”

Naruto is still blushing and it doesn’t seem like she will stop anytime soon, but it looks like it might be more than just embarrassment. Perhaps as though she were a tiny bit thrilled to have him acknowledge their relationship in this way, even if it was just a slip-up.

Maybe this is what Sakura had been talking about.

And so Kakashi slides his palm across the table, taking Naruto’s hand in his, his thumb caressing her smooth skin. If Tsunade notices and her eyebrow twitches a little, then that is perfectly fine. 

𑽎

His visit to Gai’s apartment is spontaneous. He picks up a bottle of expensive sake and some donburi takeout along the way, and then shows up unannounced.

It’s Tenten who opens the door, looking a little surprised to see him, which is understandable considering he’s had his hands full with festival planning. 

“Kakashi-san,” she says politely. “Why don’t you come in?”

“I don’t want to interrupt,” Kakashi says, but Tenten shakes her head.

“I was just about to leave, actually. But Gai-sensei is in the living room.”

As if on cue, Gai’s voice joins the conversation, shouting down the hallway.

“Is that my eternal rival, I hear? Come to challenge me to a duel, Kakashi?”

“Mah,” Kakashi says, eyeing the takeout bag. “Maybe a donburi eating contest, if you want?”

“I accept!” Gai yells at once, causing Tenten and Kakashi to exchange an exasperated look. But she just slips into her shoes and then out the door, past Kakashi. 

“Have fun,” she calls out, just enough for Gai to hear as well, and then she is gone. 

Kakashi enters the apartment, sets his sandals aside in the genkan and goes to find Gai. 

Gai is sitting in his armchair, the big comfortable one that Kakashi hurled into the house when Gai first moved into his new apartment. It’s not like Gai doesn’t get around well enough on his own, but this apartment still offered some accommodations that made his everyday life easier: an elevator and wider hallways, a walk-in shower, lower kitchen counters.

“Kakashi,” Gai greets, his face lit up with a grin. “Tenten helped me get my groceries, and I was just contemplating what to make for dinner. So your timing is most auspicious.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Kakashi says. He sets the bag down on the low table in front of the sofa, rummaging for the takeout containers. “I brought tuna and eel.”

“Tuna,” Gai says, which Kakashi knew he would pick, but then Gai’s eyebrows lift up when he sees Kakashi pull out the sake as well. “Is there a special occasion I should know about?”

“Can’t two friends just share a drink now and then?” Kakashi hedges, which is silly because he rarely drinks alcohol, and neither does Gai. Kakashi, because he doesn’t like the idea of making himself vulnerable via intoxication, and Gai because ‘excessive indulgence leads to unyouthful behavior.’

So he goes and grabs two sake cups from the cabinet in the corner, and pours both of them a drink.

“First, we must compete,” Gai announces, reaching for his donburi and snapping the chopsticks apart. “Are you ready, dear rival?”

“Sure, sure,” Kakashi says, readying his own chopsticks. “On the count of three. One, two, three-”

Gai immediately digs in, shoveling tuna and rice into his mouth like there is no tomorrow. Meanwhile, Kakashi swiftly pulls down his mask, pops a bite into his mouth, pulls the mask back up, and chews thoughtfully.

Gai gets halfway through his dinner before he notices that Kakashi is not even trying. 

“Kakashi, I feel like your heart is not in our competition today,” he observes, chopsticks hovering in front of his mouth. “I must assume that you used it just as an excuse to come see me. Is there anything you wanted to talk about?”

“I’m in love with Naruto.”

He hadn’t meant to say it quite so bluntly, but now it is done and he must face the consequences. Gai is staring at him, wide-eyed, obviously still processing this information, but Kakashi still feels like a weight has been lifted off his chest.

It feels good to say it out loud. To openly acknowledge it to someone without having to be prodded or accidentally exposed. 

Luckily, Gai has the grace to remain calm. He sets his food down, just looking at Kakashi for a long moment.

“And is young Naruto herself aware of that?” he asks finally, which is a damn good question. 

“I may be working up the nerve to tell her,” Kakashi confesses, and Gai nods sagely.

“I take it your relationship has progressed from it strictly being a marriage of convenience?”

How does Kakashi admit that they have been hooking up for over a month, without it sounding too crass?

“The marriage is still fake,” he says at length. “We’ve just been enjoying… the benefits.”

Gai takes a deep breath, blowing it out again through his nose. The look on his face is contemplative.

“I do confess that I did not anticipate this,” Gai acknowledges. “I had the impression that you felt rather downtrodden by the arrangement.”

“I did,” Kakashi admits. “In the beginning, I thought it was just another thing that I’d have to suffer through.”

Another battle, another war, another loss. Only it was the slow dismantling of his carefully constructed armor this time, Naruto wheedling her way through his defenses within a matter of weeks. 

“But it’s different now,” he continues. “Everything is different.”

In the first month of their marriage, he had believed that she must resent him for not fighting the council any harder. He thought that she wouldn’t wish to spend even a second more than necessary in his presence. Hell, part of him even expected that he would wake up one morning to find that she had left the village to run for Sasuke after all. 

And yet, she had proven him wrong on all accounts.

“I didn’t dare acknowledge it at first,” he says quietly. “She is so much younger than I am.”

“Ah,” Gai says, because he must understand this aspect better than Sakura. “I see where your concerns lie. But, for many years, she has been deemed old enough to die for the village. Do you not think that, by now, she is mature enough for this, too? Many of her friends are already settling down as well, discussing marriage and family planning.”

Nothing but the mad zest for life in the aftermath of a war, Kakashi wants to protest. Seizing the brief promise of peace and trying to make the most of it. A common reaction when one has survived tragedy, but not necessarily a sound decision. 

“Well,” Kakashi still cannot help but point out, perhaps out of some innate urge to self-sabotage. “I mean, if it were you and Tenten…” 

He would definitely have some questions if that ever happened. But Gai only laughs.

“Ah, as Tenten’s affections lie with the fairer sex, I would not stand a chance. Although,” he adds in a sly tone. “I do recall you once voicing a preference for blondes.”

Damn him. One of the few times they had actually gotten drunk together and Kakashi had made a throwaway comment that now came back to bite him in the ass.

“It’s not about her looks,” he claims, though those certainly don’t hurt. “It’s- She-  I didn’t know life could be like this.”

“Like what?”

“Good,” Kakashi says helplessly, because he cannot think of a better word. “I never felt-”

He takes a sharp, shaky breath. 

He remembers, in vague terms, life before his father died. He does not remember life before he graduated from the Academy. He has been fighting for so damn long, and he is so tired of it. The war in the Land of Fire may be over, but it keeps waging inside of Kakashi’s head. 

The pills helped. They kept him on his feet, made him take one step in front of the other. But Naruto… Naruto allowed him to enjoy the scenery. She made him want to go on the journey.

Gai only looks at him, calm and certain.

“To me it sounds,” he says, with a smile that puts dimples into his cheeks, “That it is time for you to properly commit.”

“Commit?” Kakashi echoes. “Commit to what?”

“Kakashi,” Gai says, leaning forward in his seat. “You are married to the woman you love, but you did not enter into the union when it was so. You owe it to her to make your intentions known.”

Kakashi’s heart seizes. “But what if-”

“Even if she may yet reject you,” Gai forestalls him. “That is a risk you must take. Neither of you should have to live a lie.”

He is right. Kakashi knows he is right, and he tries to shake off the instinctive fear that wishes to whisper into his ear once more. 

He picks up his food, although it has mostly grown cold by now.

“Count of three?” he asks again, clicking his chopsticks.

Gai ends up winning but only because he had a bit of a headstart. They would just have to have a rematch later. Together, they finish the bottle of sake, easily passing the next hour. 

When he makes it home, emboldened by Gai’s words and some liquid courage, Kakashi pulls out his parents’ chest of forgotten things. 

𑽎

Mid-fall is still warm and sunny, though there is a quality to the air that indicates that the weather would likely turn soon.

Naruto’s birthday arrives along with many vendors and tourists visiting the village, attracted by the festival. 

It used to be a day of mourning, to commemorate the victims of the kyuubi attack. Nowadays, they celebrate the end of the war. It also just so happens to be the six-month anniversary of their wedding. 

Naruto doesn’t seem to have noticed as much, but Kakashi toys with the warm metal in his pocket, and she must be able to tell that he is hiding something.

“Do I get a present?” she asks excitedly, bouncing on her heels, and Kakashi smiles indulgently.

“Later,” he promises. Maybe during the fireworks, if they could find a quiet spot. A rooftop somewhere, or atop of Hokage Rock.

For now, though, it is a busy day, and they are both tangled up in assorted duties.  Kakashi has to meet with various dignitaries, while Naruto has somehow been roped into doing guided tours for visitors from outside the villages. It would take up the better part of the afternoon, and then there would be the speeches and the actual celebrations in the evening. 

They head to the Hokage Tower together, through the bustling activity of vendors still setting up their stalls, tourists milling about. 

Naruto walks closely to him and Kakashi gets the feeling that maybe she would like to reach for his hand, but doesn’t quite dare to in public. So he places his own hand on her waist instead, pulls her closer against him. She looks at him with glowing eyes and a poorly contained smile which she briefly hides against his shoulder.

“People will see us,” she says, sounding very much like she doesn’t mind.

“They will,” Kakashi agrees and tightens his grip on her.

And people really do notice, staring and pointing and whispering. Of course, Kakashi is rather overt in his robes, and the tourists are likely to stare at him anyway. Not to mention that Naruto herself is famous, too. And while Kakashi cannot discern whether the attention is mostly positive or negative, he finds that he doesn’t care either way.

Let them look, he thinks, almost vindictively, finally sick of shame and denial. After all, none of them would truly understand anyway.

When they reach the Tower and their paths diverge, he bids Naruto a proper goodbye by using his hat as a shield, so he can pull down his mask to kiss her. She hums into it, palms against his chest, and when he withdraws once more to put his mask back in place, her eyes remain shut as if still enjoying the afterglow. 

He’s almost overcome by the urge to kiss her again, but they don’t really have time for that, so he just brushes his thumb over the high point of her cheek. 

“I will see you on stage,” he promises, and she sighs but nods.

As predicted, most of Kakashi’s work is dreadfully boring. Mainly, he is kissing up to assorted nobles that have found their way to the village, in the hope that they will funnel more money into the Leaf. He has grand plans for Konoha both in terms of urban development and technological progress. 

If the peace holds, which is something he has only recently started to put true faith in, then a hidden village like theirs will lose its major source of income. Without war and smaller international feuds, there is no need for all the gruesome stuff that is taught at the Academy. No infiltration missions, no abductions, no assassinations. 

A tree grows strongest when its roots are deep and it can grow leaves from many different branches, and Kakashi refuses to be the Hokage who lets Konoha fade into obscurity and obsolescence.

It turns out that instead of the daimyo himself, his youngest son has been sent to deliver his father’s regards. Prince Satonari is two years older than Naruto, but you wouldn’t think it by his overall appearance. His face is still that of a boy’s and so is much of his attitude. He seems to have inherited both his father’s entitlement and his nervous energy.

Even while ostensibly talking to Kakashi, he keeps craning his neck and looking around.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” Kakashi asks, though he already has a suspicion. 

“I have heard a great deal of the famed kunoichi Uzumaki Naruto,” the prince intones with a nasal voice. “Is there a chance that I might meet her?”

“My wife,” Kakashi informs him politely, “Will be joining us on stage. She is very busy today, but I am sure she can spare a few moments for you.”

He cannot resist the urge to cut his gaze over to his left, where Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu are seated. Koharu actually catches him looking, a self-satisfied air about her. 

‘This man could have been her husband instead,’ she seems to taunt. ‘Aren’t you glad you made the right choice?’

It’s not thanks to you, Kakashi thinks vindictively, though he knows better than to openly show his contempt.

In the evening, it is finally time for their proper public appearances. The stage has been set up, decorated with banners and with flowers. The speeches would be followed by a series of performances, but for now the technicians are still fiddling with the sound system.

Kakashi is standing next to Shikamaru, on the side of the stage, overlooking the crowd that is spilling into the market place. Rows and rows of benches are lining the plaza, colorful lanterns strung overhead, glowing amid the tender lavender sky as dusk begins to set in. 

Close to the stage, Naruto is already sitting on a bench, squeezed in-between Ino and Sakura. She’s got a stick of cotton candy the color of Sakura’s hair and the girls are snacking on it. They are animatedly whispering to each other, all the while sneaking glances at Kakashi. At some point, Ino notices Kakashi watching them in turn and she smirks, nudging Naruto in the side to make her look up as well.

Her eyes meet his and Kakashi winks, sending the three of them a little wave. It immediately makes them dissolve into giggles, and he can only imagine what exactly they have been discussing with pink faces and explicit gestures.

Kakashi doesn’t know whether Sakura has anything going on with anyone, but Ino has apparently been dating Sai, though no one seems to be sure how serious that relationship actually is. Doubtlessly, she and Naruto are now comparing notes.

At his elbow, Shikamaru has noticed his exchange with the girls.

“Women,” he sighs loudly. “Troublesome.”

“If you just asked Temari to move to Konoha, she would,” Kakashi tells him, which is enough to actually make Shikamaru stammer, so he counts it as a win.

He’s mostly teasing, of course, but the truth is that it would be a good match, and not just for diplomatic purposes. Shikamaru needs a headstrong woman who can kick his ass as needed, especially now that he is head of the Nara clan.

Finally, all the sound checks are done. Naruto hops her way onto the stage, to sit between Kakashi and Tsunade, along with the other speakers and important representatives.

“Hi,” she whispers, and their fingers find each other in the narrow space between their thighs. Once more, Tsunade thankfully acts like she isn’t aware of the exchange, though Kakashi isn’t sure how long she means to keep up the pretense.

While Kakashi knows that he has Tsunade’s respect as a shinobi and as a leader - otherwise, she wouldn’t have made him her successor - he isn’t entirely sure what she might think of him as a man. They’ve never really had enough personal interactions for that and, apart from having his former students doubtlessly vouch for his character, Tsunade might think that she could trust him with Naruto’s life but not with her virtue.

But, if everything went well tonight, then there would be no more doubt left about how dedicated Kakashi truly was.

Before long, the market place is teeming with people. Kakashi cannot help but let his gaze seek out the spots where he knows ANBU have been stationed, in case of any emergencies. There are normal chuunin and jounin patrolling as well, and medic nin in strategically placed tents. It eases Kakashi’ ever-present worry about something potentially going wrong. 

Today, he thinks, will be a good day.

They begin with Homura leading them in prayer, invoking the favor of the gods, and commemorating the dead and gone. In the grand scheme of things, the war had only lasted two days, but the wounds still ran deep and many old scars had been reopened.

But, Kakashi reminds himself, they have come far since then, especially since he had taken the necessary steps to reform the village, and he had luckily been met with little resistance. He wasn’t the only one who couldn’t stand the thought of just continuing on as they had before, and so he started at their very roots.

Since he t´has taken office, orphans, whether of civilian or shinobi parents, are required to live with guardians or at the orphanage until they are at least fourteen, when they can be assigned adequate social housing. Each orphan gets a stipend that they can comfortably live on, and there are social workers that regularly check in on them. 

No student may graduate from the Academy before the age of thirteen, no matter how much of a prodigy they might be. Genin can only take D-rank missions. No one can take the chuunin exam before fifteen. And the number one rule they would be taught was that, when meeting enemy nin in battle, the goal should be to incapacitate and restrain instead of kill.

No more half-starved children. No more child soldiers. A hospital ward led by Sakura that ensured that children received whatever mental support they needed.

The world could not be changed in a day, and no one simply healed overnight. But, slowly, slowly, life would improve for all of them. It just had taken Kakashi a little while to catch up with the program on a personal level. 

Next to him, Naruto has her eyes closed and her hands folded in prayer. She had held a speech during the previous years, so it is not odd for her to be on stage. But it is the first time she is doing this while also acting in the capacity of Kakashi’s wife, and he finds it quite distracting.

She’s wearing the blue summer dress, with a pearl grey haori on top, cinched around her waist to make it a little more modest. Idly, Kakashi fantasizes about pulling her aside, sliding his hands up under her skirt to squeeze her ass, kissing her until she is red and breathless, right before she has to go hold her speech.

But he is scheduled to speak before her, so he doesn’t get the chance. 

Once Homura is done, Kakashi takes his place behind the microphone. He always keeps his speeches short and sweet, well aware that most people are more interested in the performer that will make an appearance later: dragon dancers and jugglers and a children’s choir. 

“A fallen tree can still grow new leaves,” he finishes in a somber tone. “Even the smallest sapling may reach unchallenged heights. When the roots are deep, no fire can raze a forest. And after each winter, spring must follow. We are the Village Hidden in the Leaves.”

His words are met with furious applause and cheers. From her spot on the bench, Ino whistles loudly. Kakashi only humbly bows his head, briefly displaying the kanji for ‘fire’ that is painted on his hat. Then, he steps away from the podium.

Naruto meets him halfway on his way back to his seat, sending him a bright smile, and when they pass each other, Kakashi merely whispers, “Your turn, hime.”

It’s enough to fluster her a little bit, but she manages to compose herself once she is standing in front of the microphone.

“Twenty-one years ago, I was born in this village,” she begins.

“Happy birthday!” calls a voice that sounds like Inuzuka Kiba, and there is a smattering of laughter, even as Naruto sticks out her tongue in his general direction. 

“It took me a while, but I made some good memories here, and even better friends. Konoha has taught me what it means to believe in the Will of Fire. Because, for a long time, I thought you had to be born with it. That it would just be there, strong and immutable. But I was wrong.”

She pauses briefly, lets the words sink in, her gaze sweeping over the audience as if she were addressing every single listener.

“No fire can burn endlessly,” she continues, her voice ringing out across the market place. “It must be stoked and fed, every day, or else it will die down. And likewise, it is our duty to pass on the sparks of kindness and of courage, resilience and remembrance. Not matter what, we are all-”

She breaks off mid-sentence, her mouth hanging open as she stares out onto the crowd. Alarmed, Kakashi follows her gaze, not sure what to expect, but his muscles tense all over in preparation for a fight. 

Yet it’s no enemy nin who has found his way into their midst, no common mercenary that threatens the peacefulness of the day. Instead, it is Sasuke, standing a few rows away from the stage. Kakashi had not seen him when he was speaking at the podium, so either Sasuke had deliberately disguised his presence before or he had simply moved closer once it was Naruto’s turn.

He’s in his travel cloak, looking a little dusty and windswept, as though a breeze had randomly carried him in sometime in the past hour, his appearance perfectly timed. 

The silence threatens to become awkward, but then Naruto catches herself and picks up where she left off, as though nothing had happened. The brightness of her smile, however, has been turned all the way up.

Hidden inside the long sleeves of his robes, Kakashi’s fists clench. 

𑽎

Naruto vibrates throughout the rest of the event, obviously wanting to get off the stage and get to Sasuke as soon as possible. When it’s finally done, she jumps up from her chair so fast it nearly topples over, and then she bounds over the street and catapults herself straight into the crowd, heedless of the surprised yells some of the surrounding civilians let out.

She pays them no mind, just attacks Sasuke with a hug, arms and legs locked around him, squealing happily. It is a testament to how much Sasuke has changed that he does not push her off or call her stupid, but just smiles fondly and places his remaining arm around her.

Admittedly, after his last letter, Kakashi had not expected Sasuke’s return. Not so soon. Not in such an agreeable mood. 

From his place on the stage, he watches as Sakura finds her old team members, which finally makes Naruto let go so Sakura can pull Sasuke into an embrace as well.

“Go join them,” Tsunade says from beside Kaakshi, making him glance over, but she just makes a shooing motion. “Leave a clone here, if you want, but I think your work is done for the day.”

“... alright,” Kakashi says, pushing himself up. His robes feel cumbersome on his body, dragging down his shoulders. “Thank you, Tsunade-sama.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she waves him off. “Go celebrate with the brat.”

He stays long enough to create a shadow clone, but there is little reason for him to stall any longer. At a more sedate pace, he makes his way off the stage to join the trio. 

“-from the Land of Rivers,” Sasuke is saying to Sakura, probably in explanation of where he had last been. His gaze slides across her shoulder, cooling noticeably. “Kakashi.”

“Sasuke,” Kakashi returns, keeping his own tone placid. He’s not looking for a fight. 

“Say, say,” Naruto wheedles, pulling at Sasuke’s wrist. “How’d you like my speech?”

“You’ve held better ones.” He eyes her from the side, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “Since when do you wear dresses?”

“I like this one,” Naruto says, smoothing her hands down the skirt. “And today is a special occasion, thrice-over.”

“Thrice?” Sasuke asks and Naruto nods furiously. For a moment, Kakashi thinks that she has realized it’s their half-year anniversary after all.

“Yeah!” she says, hopping up and down. “My birthday and the festival and you came by!”

“You didn’t know the last one was going to happen.”

“But still! It’s special. So we should get some ramen and-”

Immediately, Sasuke and Sakura groan in unison and the three of them dissolve into bickering, just like they used to as genin. In the end, Naruto inevitably wins by pulling the ‘But it’s my birthday’ card, which the others reluctantly agree means she gets to pick.

So they get Ichiraku’s for old time’s sake, and because Naruto won't stand for anything else. It’s a short walk, though it is made slower by how crowded the streets are. Once more, some people stop and stare, but this time Naruto doesn’t seem to notice, fully fixated on Sasuke, and she keeps up a steady stream of conversation. Sakura occasionally chimes in as well, and Sasuke answers any questions they have, but seems happy to let the girls do most of the talking. Kakashi silently trails along at their periphery.

Eventually, they reach Ichiraku’s and it turns out that Teuchi has set up additional tables, with Ayame’s husband helping with serving the added number of patrons. Still, when Teuchi sees them, he shoos aside someone who was just about to sit down at the counter and waves over the four of them instead.

“On the house, for the heroes of our village,” he announces, swiftly wiping down the surface with a damp rag. 

Sasuke sits between Naruto and Sakura, all their knees knocking into each other, and so Kakashi takes the empty seat next to Naruto. She sits angled toward Sasuke, though, needling him with questions about his travels, and he actually bothers with giving proper answers, thoughtful and detailed. Naruto listens avidly, distracted enough that she barely pays any attention to her food, which happens virtually never.

Kakashi swirls his chopsticks through his own ramen, his appetite greatly diminished. 

“You know,” Teuchi says at some point, leaning over with a frown on his weathered face. “When she came by with Iruka-sensei the other week, every other word out of her mouth was your name.”

Kakashi only grunts vaguely, seeing no point in pursuing the conversation further. 

This, he realizes, is something he should have expected, and he chides himself for being so short-sighted, for having so much faith in their momentary bliss. 

All her life, Naruto had wanted nothing more than to be noticed. To be wanted. Is it a surprise then that she would have jumped at the first sign that someone loved her, desired her? 

Kakashi had simply exploited her vulnerability. Her naivete. 

Fourteen years younger than him and never been in a relationship before. Forced into a marriage by circumstances that had already dictated too much of her life. 

Kakashi should have raised hell to protect her, rather than bow to the council and become complicit in their schemes. Like this, he is no better than the Sandaime. Worse even, because Sarutobi Hiruzen may have stood by idly as Naruto suffered, but he never did anything to actively harm her. He never laid hands on her. 

And now, Sasuke had come to make her see reason. To make her aware of the cage she had been put in. And then he would take her away, one way or another. Maybe not this very night. Maybe not even physically. 

But he would make her understand how misguided she had been in allowing any sort of affection to grow between her and Kakashi.

All that was left for Kakashi was to take the loss gracefully and not stand in her way.

Ten minutes later, Ayame whisks their bowls away and they slip off their stools, making room for other patrons already waiting at the sidelines. 

“Where to next?” Naruto muses aloud, her chin framed by a thumb and finger. “Should we get candied apples?”

“We literally just ate,” Sakura admonishes her. “You don’t have to stuff everything down your throat just because it’s available.”

“You could show me around the village,” Sasuke suggests. “I haven’t been in the newer districts yet.”

“Oh, good idea!” Naruto agrees. “And Ino-chan said she planned a little gettogether, so we should check that out later.”

It will mostly be their old group from their graduation class, Kakashi knows, figuring this is the best moment for him to make a somewhat dignified escape.

“You kids have fun,” he forces himself to say, which is enough to make them glance back at him. 

“What?” Naruto says, confused. “Where are you going?”

“Mah, it’s been a long day,” he hedges, unable to meet her eyes. “I should probably call it a night.”

Naruto blows up her cheeks.

“But what about the fireworks?” she asks petulantly, and the weight in Kakashi’s pocket seems to burn a hole into the fabric.

“Another time,” he tells her, well aware that it is nothing but an empty promise. “You should celebrate your birthday properly, with your friends.”

“Well, if you say so,” Naruto relents, though she still seems rather reluctant. At her side, Sakura is looking between the two of them and, when she catches Kakashi’s gaze, her eyes are full of sympathy.

“Are we going to waste any more time?” Sasuke asks and it’s the closest he has been all evening to sounding like that arrogant brat he still was not so long ago. 

It must trigger something in Naruto’s brain, because she immediately follows suit, launching into a tirade about Sasuke’s lack of manners and, “This is why you have, like, five friends, max.”

Kakashi doesn’t linger to watch them disappear into the crowd together. He just turns away and walks into the opposite direction.

𑽎

He gets home, just as the fireworks are about to start. He does not stay outside to watch them, just closes the door behind himself and takes off his shoes.

In his room, at the end of the hallway, he pulls his futon from the closet and unrolls it. He doesn’t really remember the last time he used it, and it smells stale now, like dust and darkness.

He slips out of his robes, neatly hangs them up in their dedicated spot, and slips into more comfortable sleep pants. But he keeps his masked shirt on, and the fabric only vaguely itches across the skin of his nose. 

He does not go to brush his teeth or wash his face, and he doesn’t summon his dogs or pull out a well-loved novel. He just lies on his back in a room he should have outgrown by now and stares at the ceiling. At some point, he feels his clone dissolve, memories of shallow pleasantries and stage performances drizzling into the radio static of his mind. 

In the distance, there is the faint hissing and popping of fireworks, brief bursts of colorful sparkles interrupting the black of night. But eventually that, too, is over.

He doesn’t know how long he stays awake, or if he falls asleep at any point. But he hears it when the front door opens and closes, and something like desperate relief bubbles up in his chest

She came home. At least she came home. She might not stay but, for a little while longer, she’d be here.

He listens to her pad down the hallway on bare feet, hears the light in the bathroom flick on. Toilet flushing, water running. Lights off again. The door to her room. Silence.

He closes his eyes.

Half a minute later, the door to his own room slides open.

“Kakashi?” she asks, blindly walking inside until her feet find the futon, nearly kicking him in the head, but he still pretends to be asleep. It’s stupid, of course. She knows his shinobi senses do not allow him that kind of deep restfulness.

She kneels down, her hand landing on his chest, and he cannot help the way he sharply inhales.

“You weren’t in bed,” she complains. “I thought you got kidnapped on the way home.”

She finds his wrist, tugs him up, off the floor, to his feet, pulls him into the direction of the door. He follows, unable to resist. Back in her room, she flops down onto the futon, dragging him with her.

“Why are you wearing that stupid thing,” she whines, fingers hooking into the hem of his shirt and pulling it off him. The movement is awkward and unpracticed, the fabric getting stuck on his ears, mussing up his hair. She’s never really had to take it off him before, because he was never wearing it at home anymore. 

“That’s better,” she hums, her own bare chest pressed against his, familiar in its warmth. 

She must have had some sake, because she appears pleasantly flushed and tipsy, and everyone knows she is a terrible lightweight. When Kakashi tugs the duvet over their half-naked forms, she only sighs happily and cuddles up to him. 

With trembling arms, he holds her.

𑽎

Just before dawn, he slides out of bed. 

Naruto buries her face into her pillow, grumbling. “Where are you going?”

“I just have to get something from my room,” he tells her and slips outside for a moment.

His pants from the day before lie discarded on the floor. He rummages through the pockets, relieved to find that - despite his carelessness - her present did not get lost at some point.

Back in their room, he lies down next to her once more, and she gravitates toward him even half-asleep as she is. 

He brushes her hair out of her face, caresses the shell of her ear.

“I have something for you,” he says, his voice soft and hopeful.

Naruto cracks her eyes open. In the small hours of morning, the blue of her irises has turned dark and deep like the ocean. 

“For my birthday?” she asks, probably remembering that he had promised as much yesterday.

“Forever,” Kakashi says. “If you’ll have it.”

Underneath the duvet, he places it in her open palm. He feels her fingers close around it, first reflexively, and then on purpose, assessing its shape. 

“A ring?” she guesses, looking a little more awake now. She pulls her hand free to properly inspect it. 

It’s small and golden, unadorned and slightly worn. 

“It was my mother’s,” Kakashi explains. 

Traditionally, most shinobi did not wear rings. They just got in the way of fighting and were likely to get lost if you had to take them off all the time. But his mother had been a civilian, and so she had worn a wedding band. 

“Kakashi,” Naruto says. She has sat up now, looking from the ring in her hand up to his exposed face. “Are you asking me to be your wife?”

“Yes,” Kakashi says, his heart in his mouth. “I suppose I am.”

Her mouth falls open, eyes widening, the last remnants of sleep fleeing from her expression. 

“But I am your wife,” is what she finally says, and Kakashi takes her hand in his, making her fingers curl around the ring more tightly.

“You are,” he agrees. “But you didn’t have much of a choice, did you?”

Choose me, he wants to plead, but he fears that it’ll just make her do so out of pity.

“I know this wasn’t the plan,” he continues instead. “And I know you and Sasuke-”

“Kakashi,” Naruto interrupts him, her voice unusually sharp, and her gaze cuts him to the quick. “Sasuke isn’t here.”

“But he came back,” Kakashi says, and he means both yesterday and that day four years ago, when they both nearly bled out at the Valley of the End. “He came back for you.”

“But he didn’t stay,” Naruto reminds him. “He didn’t ask me to go with him. He didn’t suggest I run away. He didn’t promise his life to me. You did.”

Kakashi opens his mouth again but, before he can come up with another rebuttal, Naruto plows on.

“This whole time you thought I was just gonna up and leave, once he came knocking?” she wants to know. She sounds hurt but she doesn’t give Kakashi time to actually answer. “He’s- Sasuke’s is- There will never be anyone like him in my life. And maybe- if things had been different, he and I- But not in this life. And that doesn’t mean that you are just a substitute,” she hurries to clarify. “I love you, alright? I thought that was kind of obvious by now.”

“I had hoped,” Kakashi admits, and he thinks he might be dreaming. But his dreams have rarely been this kind. “But it seemed too good to be true.”

“Well, it is true, so you better get used to the idea,” Naruto admonishes. “Plus, Kurama likes you better.”

At that, Kakashi cannot help but chuckle. “He does?”

“Yeah,” Naruto nods. “I mean, he’s technically known you for a long time, through my mother, so he thinks you’re pretty decent. It helps that you don’t have the Sharingan anymore, though.”

“Yes, I can see why he would prefer that,” Kakashi acknowledges. He is still holding Naruto’s hand in his lap, running his thumb over her wrist, caressing her pulse.

Naruto smiles, a gleam in her eyes.

“Speaking of - did I ever tell you what my mother said when I met her?” she asks, and Kakashi numbly shakes his head. Even having seen the effects of the Edo Tensei in action, he still has trouble believing that Naruto had also been confronted with a specter of Kushina.

“She told me to eat well,” Naruto reveals. “And to marry a good man.”

There’s still a part of Kakashi that wants to protest that he is not a good man. That this is not what Kushina could ever have intended for her daughter, because Life was never meant to go this way.

But he loves her. He loves all of her: her stale breath and messy hair, her empathy and tenderness. He loves the way she still sometimes puts her foot in her mouth, and how her heart is bigger than her brain. 

And, against all odds, it appears that she loves him, too.

It seems that Naruto is done wasting any more time, because she pushes the ring back at him. 

“Come on,” she insists. “You have to do it properly.”

And so he takes the ring, and he lifts her hand, and then he nudges their heads close together. There are no fireworks here, no starshine or breathtaking view of the village, but it still feels just right.

“Will you be my wife?” he asks, very quietly.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, of course. And will you be my husband?”

“It would be my pleasure,” he says, and slips the wedding band onto her finger.

Kakashi was young when his mother died, too young to remember the sound of her voice or the sensation of her touch. Her hands, he imagines, must have been somewhat rough, calloused from hard labor. But he doesn’t know what shape they had, whether her fingers were thick or thin or knobbly. 

Her ring, however, fits Naruto perfectly.

“Wow,” she says, staring down at it with her mouth hanging open. “That’s gonna take some getting used to.”

“That’s alright,” Kakashi says. “There’s plenty of time.”

“I guess that’s true,” Naruto muses. She chews on the inside of her cheek for a moment, obviously contemplating something. When she looks up at him once more, she is looking somewhat anxious.

“I know we originally did this so I wouldn’t have to do what the elders expect of me. But I really do want kids, you know,” she tells him and, perhaps misreading his surprise for alarm, adds, “Not- Not right now, of course, but, I don’t know. Soonish. You’re not getting any younger, after all.” 

She bites her lip, looks at him from underneath lowered lashes. Her tone is somewhere between shy and coy, and it’s terribly effective. “Is that… something you could imagine? With me?”

Somehow, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. Until very recently, a proper marriage hadn’t even been a realistic life model for him, so he had never truly contemplated the idea of having children. For much of his life, he had assumed he would die young and then, when he didn’t, still never bothered to plan beyond the next few months.

But Naruto is an optimist, and now she is his wife, and the future looks rather more luminous than before.

And so Kakashi tries to imagine it. 

The patter of small feet running down the hallway. Laughter and screeches, followed by suspicious silence. A mess left in the kitchen, the washi paper torn because someone got their hands on a kunai and decided to try it in the house. Bull proudly parading around, a toddler balanced on his back. Gai immediately declaring himself an honorary uncle. 

Naruto, with her belly round, their firstborn cuddled up to her on a lazy morning. Sending a shadow clone to take care of dirty diapers. Kakashi himself, reading bedtime stories and doing all the voices. And then, once Naruto took over as Hokage, he could become a house husband and stay-at-home father.

They’d raise children together, children who would learn how to carve wood and tend to the garden, instead of merely being raised for war and strife. 

“I could see that happening,” he says, the words choked, and Naruto throws her arms around him in response, tackling him to the floor. 

“We’re gonna have a family,” she declares, the same way she had once sworn that she would become Hokage and that she would bring Sasuke back. In the face of her conviction, Kakashi has no reason to doubt her.

They’re both half-naked still and it would be an easy thing to quip about how they might as well start practicing the most enjoyable part of family planning, but for now Kakashi just wants to hold her, and bask in how alive they both feel.

Outside, warm and golden, the sun rises above Kakashi’s house, and chases away the last lingering shadows of night.

𑽎

Sick of his own face
of his skin, of the dark
he crawls outside himself
to sing - 

a better poet than most

~Hosho McCreesh