Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Traces of Love ❯ Drabbles ( Chapter 1 )

AN: Ack, finally back again. “I Say…You Say” is sadly indefinitely on hold, and has been removed until such time as I can beat it into submission. After suffering from a great deal of writer's block, a friend suggested (none too altruistically) that I dip into another fandom to rekindle my zest for fanfic writing…and writing in general. She “helpfully” suggested Naruto, and promptly rattled off some pairings I could ramble about.

I may continue to dabble (or drabble as the case may be) in this fandom for a while as I've obviously tapped myself out on Saiyuki for the time being.

 

Disclaimer: Naruto is the brainchild of Masashi Kishimoto, I've just taken the characters out to play.

 

Naruto x Hinata

“Faces”

 

It's really a shame, Naruto decides, that Hinata feels she has to hide her face behind her hitai-ate all the time; because when she smiles, really smiles, there is something in her face - when he can catch that rare glimpse of it - that is truly breathtaking. It reminds him, just a little, of the way Sakura used to smile at Sasuke. Not that Sakura ever shows a real smile anymore, only a tired, forced pinching of her lips, an attempt at joy that never quite reaches her eyes, and Naruto thinks that's a shame too.

“They're gonna put my face right there,” Naruto gestures helpfully to the stone faces of the Hokage silently presiding over the village, distant since he and Hinata are sitting together on a hill on the farthest side of the village from it, but visible none the less, golden brown in the sunset.

“Actually…” he furrows his brow, concentrating, calculating, “They'll probably put granny Tsunade there, so I'd be…over there.”

He swivels his arm, picks out the best spot on the mountain side, where the sun makes the bare rock look like it's glowing. Hinata watches him, silent, spellbound.

“Nah…I'll be so great, they'll have to give me my very own mountain!”

That's when Hinata giggles, a delicate, musical sound, as if she's not quite sure that it's permitted; and Naruto knows that it's not because she doesn't believe him, but because she believes him so completely that she can probably already picture his face on his own private spire of stone.

Yes, it's a shame that Hinata hides her face behind her hitai-ate, because it means Naruto has to waste the extra time to pull it past her chin when he wants to kiss her.

 

Kakashi x Iruka

“Scars”

 

He comes back, as always, caked in mud and filth and worse things, like the blood crusted underneath his fingernails and in his silver hair.

Iruka has the washcloth and basin of lukewarm water already set out on the bedside table. Kakashi moves slowly, as if every thought and action pains him, sags into the mattress, hunched forward over his knees, and waits.

The hitai-ate goes first, clanging faintly as it hits the floor. Iruka wrings the cloth over Kakashi's head, watches lines of water trickle down to dampen the collar of Kakashi's mask. He combs his fingers through the tangles of Kakashi's hair, pushing it forward and backward, hunting out of instinct for bruises, welts, and other obvious signs of cranial trauma.

Kakashi's hair will be sickly pink for days, but Iruka will pretend not to notice.

Kakashi has that unnatural stillness of all Jonin as Iruka removes his vest and the black shirt underneath, but shivers just a little as Iruka pulls the mask over his head.

There is a scar on Kakashi's neck, just below his left ear, where someone once tried to slit his throat, but came up short. Iruka runs a finger over it, tries not to think about steel slicing skin. There are more scars on Kakashi's body, Iruka thinks, than there are clear patches of skin, only visible through a contrast of pale tones. Iruka's fingers guide the washcloth over the raised lines, as if he could scrub them away. He works the washcloth in between Kakashi's long fingers, rubbing away blackish grime, massaging the tiny scars on his fingertips where Kakashi endlessly draws blood for his summons. There is a scar across the back of Kakashi's right hand where he once stopped a giant shuriken; another along the length of his arm almost to his elbow from a katana; circular patches on either side of his upper arm where a senbon pierced clean through the muscle.

Each scar has a story that Iruka has been told in confidence.

The scar over Kakashi's eye is not the worst on his body - that honour goes to the long stripe of scar tissue which runs all the way across Kakashi's back from his right shoulder to his left hip, a zanbato wound - but its story is the saddest.

In Kakashi's medical file there is a single, cold, clinical photo of a young Jonin with a dead boy's eye staring emptily out of the long gash on his porcelain pale face.

The smallest, sweetest scar is the one on Kakashi's right knee, from tripping and falling in the garden behind his house when he was four.

There are no new scars, this time, and Iruka is grateful for that, because his fingers can only stand to memorize so many.

 

Shikamaru x Temari

“Concessions”

 

If not for the fact that Shikamaru really can't be bothered, they would argue constantly, over everything; because Temari is probably the most stubborn woman that Shikamaru has ever met. She can't stand to be wrong on anything, to be countered, second-guessed or pre-empted.

She is not a graceful loser, and Shikamaru knows she can kick his ass if she wants.

But as much as that drives him crazy, Shikamaru knows that's probably what attracted him to her in the first place.

In order to keep himself sane and free of small but nonetheless irritating flesh wounds, Shikamaru makes certain strategic concessions.

They never play shogi, for one.

Shikamaru never complains about her wanting to spend so much time with her brothers, or about how much it irritates him that the sand gets in everything, even his underwear, or about the fact that she's always jumping in to save him, even when he can handle things just fine on his own.

He never complains about the fact that she hogs the blankets, can't really cook, and sometimes goes away on missions without remembering to tell him first.

He does mention however - on occasion, when Temari is in a good mood and not of a mind to crack him over the head with her fan for `complaining too much' - that the clouds back home are much nicer than the ones in the Sand Village.

Which happens to be one of the few things they agree on.

 

Kiba x Shino

“Animal”

 

Shino wonders sometimes if Kiba's mother didn't simply throw him into the kennels as a baby and leave the dogs to raise him, because really, it's easy to forget that Kiba is human.

Kiba growls in his sleep, scratches and belches in public, will eat almost anything and eat it with his fingers, can go days without bathing even if he's been rolling in the mud, and generally says anything that comes to his mind, no matter how crude or insensitive.

Kiba would rather sleep on the ground than in a bed, would rather eat his meat raw than cooked, and will lick at his wounds if there is no one around to stop him.

He would go without clothes, if he had the choice, run naked through the trees with nothing but the leaves and the cold wind around him.

Shino even thinks that Kiba might howl at the moon.

Then again, Kiba has never said anything to Shino about all the tiny little scars on his body where the kikaichu eat through his skin, or the strange beetle-shell blackness of his eyes; and Kiba makes the most endearing little whimpering noises when Shino kisses him, wraps himself around Shino in the darkness so tight as to almost be bruising, and whispers “I'm not lettin' you go.”

Animals, dogs especially, love completely, and unconditionally. The best dogs are fiercely loyal in a way that no other animal can be.

Shino thinks sometimes that the dogs really raised Kiba right.