Chapter 16
Naruto approaches her from the east, and there are stripes of determination in every sharp line of him, his gaze steady and unwavering. She pauses, arms full of groceries, and turns to receive him. Her heart’s already racing by the time he manages to stop in front of her, the usual reaction to seeing him, to being close enough to touch.
“Hinata,” he breathes, panting. Her eyes scan over him, seeking injuries, that perhaps he’d come straight from the training grounds, but she finds nothing on his person but resolve.
They’re standing in the middle of one of the busiest streets of Konoha, just along the market district, and the commotion is only distracting enough for a few moments before Hinata recognizes in the trembling of his hands that Naruto is nervous.
“I’ve been trying to figure things out here for a while now, and I think I’ve finally got it.”
Hinata hasn’t a clue in the world what he could be talking about, but she nods anyways, slowly, wonderingly, because Naruto usually doesn’t follow confusing trains of thought. He usually moves through them, finds a shortcut and exploits them until a semblance of an acceptable and working answer is at his fingertips. That is his way.
“I spoke to Iruka-sensei,” he begins, and Hinata’s eyebrows jump up in surprise. What does Iruka have to do with anything? “And I asked him about love.”
Love, Hinata thinks, fingers tightening around her groceries, ribcage swallowing her heart whole. Naruto has been chasing tendrils of love, seeking answers, and he’s come to her.
“Love?” she whispers, and her brows dip low to purse, skeptical and curious and hopeful.
“We’ve been dating for a few months now,” he says, and it shocks her again to hear it. Naruto rarely puts it into words, which is fine; actions have always spoken louder to her. But this moment feels somehow pointed, and significant, in a way that requires verbalization. That Naruto had read as much into the same air surprises her, in a pleasant way.
“We have sex all the time,” Naruto says, openly in the middle of the street with reckless, uncaring abandon, and Hinata is a blink away from melting through the dirt. Her face and ears and throat heat molten in seconds, and if her arms hadn’t been tied up with groceries, she would’ve covered her face from the embarrassment.
“But that’s not, like, the point. I mean it’s a really great thing, and I don’t ever want to stop, it’s actually probably my favorite thing, but it’s not…” And here, he stops to angrily blow out a puff of air, leaning all of his weight on his hip. He mouths something to himself, possibly encouragement, maybe criticism.
“Iruka-sensei told me a lot of things I don’t remember,” Naruto continues on, just as blithely, and Hinata wants to laugh. But then she realizes that Naruto has been talking about their sex life to Iruka, their old Academy teacher and also Naruto’s dad, and she feels immediately faint. She wonders if, by association, Kakashi knows, too. Given that he is now also Naruto’s dad.
She decides then and there to stop thinking about it entirely, because she wants to be awake and conscious for this conversation. So she turns her frazzled focus back to Naruto and finds herself locked in the steel of his gaze, certain and steadfast.
Naruto says, “But I got the gist.”
“The gist,” Hinata laughs lightly, beaming at him. Someone bumps slightly into her from behind, pushing her a little closer to Naruto, and he receives the movement smoothly, with hands coming up to rest gently on her cheeks. He stares down at her with a gravity she can only remember seeing on the preface of war, and it sends her heart into a flurry in response.
“Love is the jelly to sunshine’s peanut butter,” he says, unblinking, “And if I tell you that I’m in sandwich with you, I’m not just saying it to get in your Ziploc bag.”
Hinata blinks, once, slowly, and then she has to put everything she has into stifling her laughter. The tension rolls out of her with ease, loosening every line of her back into delicately smoothed arcs, and her eyes light with adoration.
“I understand,” she says, and it shows how close they’ve grown and how well they understand each other that in this explanation, she truly does understand, and Naruto expects her to.
“I know you’re in sandwich with me,” she says, and she can’t help it this time: she bursts into laughter, but most of it is simple joy, and Naruto brightens in response, that easily. “And because you’re in sandwich with me, you can continue to get in my Ziploc bag.”
Hinata makes the mistake of flickering her gaze away from Naruto and lands on a young boy, no older than thirteen, frozen to the spot and staring at them in pursed confusion. He mutters, “What the heck kind of mixed signals,” and then he drops his skateboard back to the dirt and kicks off, shaking his head. Hinata is ready for a cold shower, a sudden downpour, anything to cool the filched heat of her skin.
Embarrassing, she thinks for just a moment before Naruto leans in over her groceries and presses a kiss to her cheek, and then her lips, once, and then twice.
“I am,” he laughs, citrus joy brushing against her chapped lips, “I am totally, one hundred percent in sandwich with you.”
And really, Hinata thinks as she presses further into his lips, his kiss, his joy, that’s all she’s ever wanted.