Chapter 3
Sometimes when Naruto looks at her, he remembers the moment Iruka-sensei saved his life.
There’s a connection between the two that he can’t put into words, can only feel, one that means safety, and hope, and home.
Hinata has become all of those things, to him.
Naruto watches the way she moves through their place, fingertips sliding over surfaces of walls and desks on her way to the kitchen, leaving behind the scent of fresh lavender. Sometimes that’s all he does, is watch.
(Sometimes he does more)
The legal document that binds them says that they’ve belonged to one another for twenty years, two decades of ups and downs they’ve weathered with love and courage, together.
Naruto has belonged to Hyuga Hinata for much longer than that, though.
He still looks at her sometimes and remembers that red scarf, and the feeling of snow melting around his aching body, so small with such big pain. Sometimes he remembers iron bars and piercing screams, blood spilling over home soil, and the one-two flicker of his heartbeat a moment before his rage overcame every ounce of his control in the form of Kurama.
Sometimes he remembers the first feeling of her lips on his, and how gentle he had been, and how her hands had slid into his hair and pulled.
He loves the look and the feeling of her, has never loved anything more, so it follows that with all that watching he does he’d soon notice the subtle signs of her growing insecurity. It startles him, when he sees her own hands tracing the slope of her curves and her resulting frown. Her lips purse, brows drooping in concern, and Naruto’s heart flickers in his chest.
At first, he suspects that she’s pregnant—again. It’s a very typical him thing to expect, and being that he is an incredibly impulsive person, he excitedly asks her about it one day.
As it turns out, this was exactly the wrong thing to misunderstand.
“Why would you think that?” Hinata asks him, and her eyebrows, so expressively sad, scold Naruto. He deflates instantly when she says, “Do I l-look larger?”
“No!” He immediately refutes, before quickly scanning over her body. He realizes with disappointment that it’s true, she hasn’t grown larger at all, and he had gotten too excited for a possibility that was so clearly refuted now.
“I just thought—“ he starts, but doesn’t know how to verbalize what he’d thought without offending her more. He shakes his head, moving towards her until his hands could slide over the breadth of her wide hips, up the slope of her waist and back to rest over her tailbone. Her arms come up and around him without hesitation, and he tucks his chin against the cove of her neck, allowing the heat of her skin to soothe him. “Never mind. I jumped to conclusions and got excited because, well, it’s hard to explain.”
He can’t really just come out and say, I’ve noticed you’ve been feeling yourself lately and expect her to take him seriously. So he doesn’t say a thing, and instead, he shows her exactly how wrong every one of her insecurities are, right there on the kitchen counter.
✧
Sometimes when Hinata looks at him, she remembers pain’s face moments before he almost killed her.
The memory is an amalgamation of emotions, good and bad, but mostly it’s the pivotal point of her expressed freedom to be herself. She had told Naruto she loved him, and she had fought with her all to protect him, and she’d done well.
That moment, suspended in time and hitched in her memory like a fringed tapestry, recalls every feeling of hope towards the future, even when she hadn’t been sure she’d live to see one.
It’s followed soon after by her eyes opening to a hospital room, and Naruto sitting at her bedside, bandaged and tearful but smiling—this memory is nothing but good, even when she became aware of the pain. Still good.
Still good.
It baffles her now, so many years later, that she and Naruto belong to each other. She had been his since the moment she’d seen him in action, heard and felt the courage and the compassion in him, that telltale indomitable caring. She had been his since the start.
To think about him belonging to her, now, that they’ve been married for two decades and have had two children together—it’s a striking zap of joy upon every retelling.
Time has aged them both in many ways, though Hinata has noticed far too much of it as of late. She stands in front of the mirror and traces the curve of her hips, and the softness of her skin. There’s more of it, now, and she wonders sometimes if Naruto notices.
If it bothers him, that she’s big.
The thoughts are an incessant chatter she can’t rid herself of, even when he continues to touch her so lovingly, so gently, hands sliding over hips and flanks and thighs, endlessly seeking. He touches her with a dual-edged kind of careful carelessness, as though he’s running out of time but he’s imprinting every inch of her to memory regardless.
It’s difficult to feel anything from his touch but love and adoration, and to get anything from his heavy gaze but attraction, but even still—
Hinata has always struggled with insecurity.
She wishes it had nothing to do with Arai, Naruto’s new secretary, because she’s a kind woman and she’s a hard worker and Hinata likes her. She’s a sweet girl, respectful and dutiful, and she reminds Hinata so much of Kurenai-sensei it’s impossible to treat her with anything other than affection.
She’s also beautiful in a way Hinata has always dreamt of being, and she knows it. Her confidence is something Hinata admires and looks up to, even if the woman is nearly twenty years her junior.
Sometimes Hinata thinks about Naruto and Arai spending so much time together and she has doubts—not because of anything that Naruto or Arai has ever said or done, but because Hinata isn’t quite used to being confident in herself. It’s a difficult road to self-love, and it’s one she’s still traveling.
Hinata blows a buff of air up at her bangs and straightens her shoulders, lifting her chin. She smiles at herself in the mirror and studies the laugh lines creasing her skin with eyes gleaming in wonder, and in joy. She doesn’t view them negatively, not when so many incredible memories had been their cause. She traces them lovingly and remembers as many of them as she can, and she smiles.
She greets the day, and she smiles.
✧
Naruto is so bored.
No one ever warned him about all of the paperwork that comes with being Hokage, and honestly, he should’ve been warned. Kakashi-sensei keeps trying to tell him that he had been warned, by several people, including Kakashi-sensei, but Naruto’s pretty sure he would’ve remembered something like that.
Pretty sure.
He finds himself spinning around in his chair, knees hitting the edge of the desk every now and again. It’s a beautiful, bright day out in Konoha and he has so much work to do but he can practically smell Ichiraku from here, and he’s hungry anyways.
Arai walks into the room a moment before he leaps out of his chair and plans to walk out of the Hokage tower, and slams a brand new stack of paperwork right in the center of his desk—probably more village plans. He glances at it forlornly, expression drooping. He squints at the ink scrawled overtop and decides it doesn’t sound incredibly important, and continues to inch towards the door, as though Arai won’t even notice.
She does, though. “Where are you going, Hokage-sama? You have work to do here.”
“Okay, but listen,” he starts, turning back to her with one finger raised. He opens his mouth to explain, watching the way she turns to him and crosses her arms, resting her weight on one hip. She looks so unimpressed, as though she knows he’s about to spout some incredulous nonsense.
That look has him switching tactics immediately. Instead of the explanation he was going to give, something that would’ve been short and sweet like I’m hungry, he says, “Arai-chan, you’re a hard-working young person. And my sensei always taught me that the best training for hard-working young people was—”
“Hokage-same, if you suggest I go anywhere that involves nudity one more time,”
“I wasn’t going to!” Naruto hurries to deny, shaking his head. “I was totally going to suggest that you forge my signature on all those plans you just delivered, believe it. I have a really easy signature, just splatter some ink and make a spiral, gets them every time—ask Shizune!”
Arai’s expression somehow manages to drop even further, as though the life was slowly being leeched out of her. Naruto decides that this, truly, is his best chance.
“Thanks!” He chirps, and before she can even straighten he disappears in a flurry of smoke, which then sets the fire alarms off throughout the Hokage tower.
He lands on the street outside and curses, lifting a hand to scratch idly at the back of his head. He glances back up at the windows and can see Arai opening them and fanning the smoke out with what looks to be a scroll, and he knows he’s going to get an earful from Iruka-sensei.
“Probably worth it,” Naruto mutters to himself, ignoring the curious looks being thrown his way from passerby. He tucks his hands into his pockets under his Hokage cloak and starts whistling, heading straight for Ichiraku. He lets himself enjoy the soft touch of the sun on his face, smiling up at it with eyes closed. He doesn’t get much time just to himself, though.
After a moment he senses pitter-patter around him, and before long he finds a group of kids surrounding him. They pace him step for step, smiling up at him, some pulling bravely at the hem of his cloak. He laughs with them, answering their childish questions and giving spectacular advice when he can. He greets the young and older adults that call out to him as well, returning their smiles and their kindness.
It isn’t long before he turns the corner and sees Ichiraku, and his small group of young kids has grown to a wide berth of children, teens, and young adults radiating around him. He wonders if they’re all planning on coming to Ichiraku, and if he’s going to be responsible for their bills. If so, he’s not above pulling a Kakashi-sensei.
He has a family to help feed, after all.
He glances up from one of the teens he’d been challenging to spar and almost stops walking, his eyes falling over a particularly beautiful set of legs. For one heart-stopping moment Naruto feels ashamed of himself, for experiencing such a sharp reaction of attraction to a relative stranger, before everything in his system cools and calms.
He knows those curvaceous legs, and the wide but sloping hips they lead up to. And truly, when he calls out her name, Hinata turns over her shoulder in surprise. His heart kicks back up into an accelerated pace, and he moves towards her with long strides, his smile breaking out across his face like sunrise.
“Hey,” he breathes, as his hands find purchase on her hips, cupping gently and pulling her into the cove of his larger body. He leans down carelessly and kisses her, sloppy and loudly just to make the kids go wild. They coo and shout out about cooties, gross adults, and pervy Hokages. When Naruto pulls back, only enough to see her elegantly flushed expression, every ounce of tension in him subsides.
“Hi,” she breathes, and he can feel her hands slide up to his chest. “I was just getting take-out.”
Naruto’s heart bounds double-time, and he leans back in to press smiling kisses to her throat. The kids go wild again, some of the older ones disappearing to give them privacy, and the younger from embarrassment.
“I love you,” Naruto breathes, “I’m so damn lucky.”
Hinata laughs, a stunned sound, and Naruto nuzzles against her neck and shoulder. He feels her lift onto the tips of her toes until her lips could press against the skin just below his ear, a moment before she whispers, “The feeling is mutual.”
And Naruto plans instantly for Sasuke to be watching the kids tonight, because he and Hinata are going to have plans.
And these plans are the kind he loves.