Between the Trees

Naruto shifts first, and Hinata knows without having to look that he’s stretching, arms extended high overhead, chest pushed forward. She knows without having to look, but she looks anyways.

Naruto catches her stare and grins, sloppy and lop-sided, eyes creased shut.

“I’m up before you,” he acknowledges teasingly. “Lazy!”

She merely groans in response, reaching out from under the blankets to pinch lightly at the skin of his waist. There’s a scar around there, she thinks idly, sleepily.

“Come on, come on,” he says, shifting around until he’s sitting up beside her, blankets draped around his hips. His muscles flex and twitch with every movement, and Hinata is a perpetually captivated audience, silently appraising. She feels his hand slide over the blanket, up her arm and to her shoulder. He massages her skin there, fingertips gentle and soothing.

Hinata flicks her gaze up to his face, studying the still-there pillow creases left behind on his cheeks, and the way his eyes dance in the shadows. It’s midday, and they both have mission reports to pick up, but still she lays there. It’s easy to lose track of time like this; to gaze idly at Naruto in wonder, in awe. To look just to look.

“You’re going to be late,” Naruto sings, laughing lowly. He leans down and presses a kiss to her forehead, scattering her already tussled bangs. He pulls away and gazes down at her fondly, head tilted and smile crooked.

“I’m warming up to it,” she says, finally, with a voice like crushed stone. She clears her throat as delicately as she can, blushing all the while as she tries to decipher what time it is, and how long they’d slept. Sunlight creeps through the blinds, spilling through like gold, cast iron under such heat. 

“You’re stalling,” Naruto counters playfully, watching her eyes trail around the room for only a moment before catching his once more “Totally stalling.”

“Naruto-kun,” she complains, voice low and intimate as she brings a hand out and pulls gently on his shoulder. She waits for him to relax into the touch—it only takes so long as the sensation of her fingertips on his skin to register—before he’s leaning down with her pull, until his head hits the pillow. She moves carefully, wedging herself against his side, her ear lying over his heart. Her left hand splays over his chest, fingers spread wide, as if to reach as much of him as she possibly can, even with such a minuscule, thoughtless gesture.

“It’s the middle of the day,” Naruto reminds her, one arm coming up to rub soothing circles against her back, right along the line of her spine. “You’re bein’ a little dramatic about this waking up thing.”

“Dramatic?” She asks, stifling laughter. She thinks of every morning with Naruto’s head in his hands, groaning about not wanting to get out of bed, about the coldness of the floor and the air and the water in the shower. She thinks of just yesterday, on their mission, when he had refused to leave his blanket—even when the enemy appeared right outside their cave front. “Me?”

“Yes you,” Naruto says seriously, and she can hear the way he struggles to maintain his composure in the slight tremble of his words, wobbling with suppressed laughter.

She snuggles in close to him, feeling every idle movement of his hand on her back. The ease of this coveted intimacy, something she had only ever dreamt of before, baffles her. That she can lay against him, skin to skin, and feel nothing but joy as his fingertips move over her, every touch a promise and a treat.

She remembers thinking about this, dreaming of it—wondering what it would be like to wake up next to Naruto in the mornings. She remembers the emptiness of her own bed in the morning, and the heavy feeling of loneliness settling in close; the way she felt robotic in the morning, just for those few seconds, the life drained out of her by the stark reality of her loneliness.

Now, however, she moves in close to him and presses her lips to his skin. He’s warm—he’s always warm. Just as the sun heats the Earth in welcome, breathing life and action into everything that had been still, Naruto breathes into her. He moves in her, a simple glance, a cherished touch, and she feels reborn.

“Just a few more minutes,” she pleads, puffing out a breath against his skin, just to see his muscles twitch. “Just let me lay down in your sunlight.”

I love the way it makes me come alive.

Naruto laughs, lips pressed to her forehead, and together they greet the day.