Chapter 12
Hinata’s fighting style is every bit the essence of a lightning strike without the actual electricity; it’s shockingly similar to Sasuke’s, and that’s enough to set Naruto on the defensive within an instant of her initial chakra flare. She’s quick and bright and deadly, and chakra pulses around her fingertips, her hands. She moves so quick Naruto actually has to try to track her.
Naruto’s style has always been louder, a not quite slow rumbling full of power and intent that hits so hard the Earth can’t help but to tremble. He supposes, in the brief instant he has to retrace her steps before she appears just before him, that he is hers and Sasuke’s both, in a way—the following thunder to their electric activity.
Hinata zigzags beautifully towards him, far too quickly for him to evade with anything more than a last-second twist. She disappears in a blink, and the next thing he knows is her breath on his skin.
“Don’t,” Hinata breathes, close enough for her lips to just barely graze over the lobe of his ear, “Go easy on me.”
He has no momentum to push himself away, so he does the only thing left for him to do: he pushes her away, and he uses Rasengan to do it. She manages to swipe a single fingertip over his waist before she’s blown away in a tangle of limbs and midnight hair, and he feels his chakra center flicker, the temporary absence of it so debilitating he falls to one knee.
Three of his shadow clones follow her path, meeting her when she summersaults to a standing position, but she’s prepared for them, even as she clutches at her pained stomach with one hand. His heart twinges, giving an almighty jerk towards her, a punishment and a yearning, both.
He’s used to her demanding fairness in their spars, and he tries to obey, but.
He doesn’t want to hurt her and he knows that he can. It’s not a question of who is stronger or quicker or more determined to land a hit—it’s more that they are on two different levels of power, and they both know it.
Even still, Hinata asks for his all, and he tries to give it.
For her, he would give anything.
He watches her almost carelessly dispose of his clones, spinning in lilting arcs, hands trailing beautifully overhead and around her in circumferential paths that take his breath away. His clones dissipate and he shudders, slowly getting back to his feet. He reaches up to flat pane of his shoulder, feeling the warmth of the skin there and knowing, knowing that if he’d still had his arm she would’ve incapacitated it with that last swipe.
He looks up into her eyes and he can see that she knows it, too, and it’s enough to fill him with pride. She doesn’t let him hold it for too long, even when her lips curl up into a shy smile. She keeps that same grin even as she dashes towards him, hands outstretched and reaching dangerously.
He dances away from her touch with careful, measured movements, and listens to the way she controls her breaths. Time seems to slow as his eyes, wide and enamored, follow every one of her breathtakingly swift movements. She moves like a dancer, like danger, and it moves him, too.
She notices his inattentiveness, however, and she makes him pay for it. Her smile drops into something of a concentrated frown, lips pursed cutely, and Naruto smiles a second before he feels her leg impact his left instep.
His body is thrown to the ground and he has enough time to flip himself over onto his back before she’s on top of him, one hand poised around his throat, the other extended behind her, hovering carefully over a dangerous pressure point in the clone wielding a kunai at her throat. She grins down at him, panting and sweating, her bangs sticking messily to her face, and Naruto has never seen her look more beautiful.
“Woah,” he breathes, and he’s slightly out of breath, too. “Dang, Hinata.”
“You went easy on me,” she argues, and he feels her fingertips tighten for only a flicker of a second, enough time for a leaf to dance in the orchestra of a breeze around them, before her hand slides away to rest daintily on his shoulder. She allows her weight to settle over him, her legs around his hips, and he swallows.
His clone dissipates behind her and she relaxes her extended arm, bringing both hands down to rest on his shifting chest. She watches his face for a moment, lips still pursed as though debating whether she wants to maintain her frustration with him. He grins up at her, sharp-toothed and doting, and senses new presences nearby. They’re familiar, though, so he doesn’t pay them much attention.
This won’t be the first time village people have seen him and Hinata in suspicious positions on the training field.
He watches Hinata sense them a moment later, her eyes gleaming with sudden awareness. He lifts his hand to her hips and presses down warningly, and watches the way her cheeks flare with heat. She obeys the silent demand, however, and allows her chest to slowly drop to rest against his. He feels her nose nestle in against his neck, uncaring of how sweaty he is or the trail of blood running down his cheek from a slyly hidden kunai she’d thrown earlier.
His hand slides around her, pressing gently down against her tailbone, wanting them as close as possible. They’re both out of breath but he doesn’t mind the weight of her on top of him; it comforts him, and excites him.
“You’ve gotten quicker,” she breathes against his throat, as the village begins to awaken around them, the sun peeking over the mountains and people coming from their houses to walk the market streets. Some pass by them and laugh behind their hands, gesturing to their Hokage and his fiancé, so intimately exposed. Hinata presses so close to him he can feel the heat in her cheeks against his jaw, and he turns to nuzzle against her.
“So have you,” he whispers against her ear, allowing his teeth to gently tug. He hears her inhale and it makes chills race icy cold down his heated spine. Her fingers push up from his chest and run over his jaw, his cheeks, and into his hair. This, he thinks, eyes slipping shut, is his favorite feeling in the entire world.
The two of them alone and free before the sun rises, tangled up in each other and pressed close wherever they can, lips whispering promises against one another’s skin.
Naruto looks up at the opening sky and wonders if maybe, just maybe, their love is the reason it brightens.