Between the Trees

“Sakura-chan,” Naruto began, but Sakura wasn’t done with him yet. She paced after him, matched him step for step, and Naruto found himself cornered rather quickly against a nearby building. The entire street was filled with people, filled to bursting, but Sakura wasn’t hindered in the slightest. Not even when people began to stop and watch, equal parts amused and curious. She jabbed her finger into his chest and Naruto spared a moment to silently thank whoever was listening that there’d been no chakra behind the gesture.

“How many times do I have to tell you before it makes it through that thick skull of yours,” she growled and Naruto laughed, jittery and nervous but unable to take the threat of her completely seriously. It’s not that he doubted she would harm him—just as soon as she would then heal him—because he knew better than that. It’s more the fact that he just never really recognized self-preservation when he should, and when he finally did, it was usually too late already.

“Sakura-chan—”

“You know,” she continued on her rampage, strong in her stride. “One day she’s not going to forgive you, you know? Is that what you want? To lose her, after you worked so hard to get her?”

Sakura had always been good at threats, and this time was no different. Naruto’s expression slipped and sharpened in a blink, and his wide shoulders tensed under the strain of sudden solemnity. Sakura didn’t back down, even as a slow rumbling began in his chest and boiled from between his teeth in the only guttural response he could give.

Anger turned him molten, slow moving but savage and when he spoke it was with a snarl.

“No.”

Sakura did not cut him any slack, her features and her shoulders as strict and cutting as they always were when she taught him a lesson she thought he should’ve already learned. She crossed her arms over her chest and though her upper body strength was tremendous, it didn’t show in the way that it did on Tenten’s frame; all chiseled muscle, hard and cut. Sakura had a deceptive softness to her that made foolish people underestimate her, and it’d been a long, long time since Naruto was foolish enough to be among those ranks.

“You sure?” Sakura goaded him, tone mocking. Her voice held nothing but barbed intent, and that’s how he knew that she was serious. Sometimes, when she taught him hard lessons, exasperated amusement would trickle into the end of her teaching and he’d find himself let off a little easier than he otherwise might’ve been.

Not today, though.

“Yes,” he said, through gritted teeth. “I’m serious.”

“Then prove it,” she said, and finally took a step back from him, out of his personal space. He allowed himself to unfurl away from the brick at his back, stepping once after her just to prove that he wasn’t to be cowed. With one last parting glance, he lifted his hands into a familiar jutsu and disappeared before Sakura could do anything else, like punch him through a building.

Or three.

Usually, it’s not difficult for Naruto to find Hinata, regardless of where she was in the village. She had her usual haunts, her favorite places, and a few hideouts that only her precious people were privy too. And usually, Naruto could count himself amongst one other who was precious enough to the Hyuuga heiress to know every single one of them.

So when he searched high and low for the better half of the day and visited every spot on his mental checklist and still wasn’t able to find so much as a strand of her chakra or even her hair, he started to grow frustrated.

Really frustrated.

This was why he found himself pushing open the massive doors to Tenten’s personal training arena, which Gai-sensei and Lee had built themselves several years back. He moved unerringly through the doorway and barged straight into what appeared to be Tenten and Neji trying valiantly to systematically obliterate the other.

Naruto didn’t even hesitate before stepping in-between them, gentle fists and battle axes be damned.

Tenten altered the trajectory of one battle axe at the very last minute upon seeing Naruto right where her intended target had been just a moment prior—the target being Neji’s head. Neji made evading Naruto look quick and easy with a high twisting somersault over his head, but when Naruto glanced over to find him standing beside Tenten there was a gleam in his eyes that was a mixture of annoyance and relief.

“What the hell is your problem?” Tenten snapped, allowing her axe to fall heavily with the help of gravity, until it buried itself halfway into the dirt beneath their feet. Neji eyed it speculatively, and Naruto thought he might have seen him swallow just then. “You trying to get yourself killed?”

Naruto rolled his eyes, any and all traces of self-preservation still buried way too deeply for his own good. “Of course not. I’m looking for Hinata.”

He spoke to Tenten, but his eyes leapt to Neji immediately, focusing in with pinprick pupils as the taller of the two straightened. He let nothing of his reaction show on his face, merely blinked at Naruto and exuded the same annoying level of arrogance that Naruto was used to from him. Naruto narrowed his eyes.

“She could be anywhere,” Tenten said, and her tone, too, was cool and untouchable. A sudden and sharp difference from the wildness of her initial reaction to his presence in her arena…and Naruto might not be very fond of mind games, at all, but he had grown up alongside Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura under Hatake Kakashi’s tutelage.

He’d learned a thing or two about mind games and subtlety along the way.

“If you had to guess,” Naruto moved forward, relentless and intentional. He flicked his gaze to watch Tenten’s face, knowing that she was more likely to give away a clue than Neji and his mask of apathy. He watched her carefully as he asked, “Where would you place her?”

Neji spoke before Tenten could, but Naruto’s eyes didn’t move. “Hard to say. It’s a rather large village, after all.”

How trite, Naruto thought, and somehow the words sounded faintly like Sasuke’s. Of the people who knew every spot on Hinata’s list, Neji was the only other person besides Naruto himself.

So if he was going to underestimate Naruto’s capacity to play a hand in this game, then Naruto didn’t have the time for him at all.

“It’s spring,” Tenten surmised, tilting her head and studying the taut lines of Naruto’s frame. “Hinata does so enjoy the Yamanaka gardens this time of year.”

Been there, Naruto thought, checked that.

In fact, that had been one of his first stops, considering he could kill two birds with one stone if he found Yamanaka Ino there. And he had, though she had been about as forthcoming as a pile of stone, making her allegiance to Hinata and her secrecy well and truly known, even in the face of Hinata’s own fiancé. She had mentioned something about Hinata wanting to sharpen her edges a bit, which is one of the main reasons that Naruto had headed immediately to Tenten’s arena, however.

And before Ino, Nara Shikaku had crossed Naruto’s path and mentioned something about it being a troublesome time of year, with so much pollen, so many flowers. Normally, Naruto would have thought nothing of such an offhanded comment; especially from someone Naruto considered even more confusing than Shikamaru.

But then he’d added, almost as a deliberate afterthought: Shame if Hinata-chan’s allergies act up again.

And that had been moments before he ran into Sakura.

A singular line had begun to connect the dots in his mind and Naruto straightened with sudden realization, teeth grinding together. He was being led in circles.

Kurama’s voice leaked into the tempest of Naruto’s frantically racing thoughts, growling two simple words in a different shade of Naruto’s voice, so that they sounded like Naruto’s own thoughts.

Tell me.

It had been a long time since Kurama had festered like this, and longer still since he had purposely tried to interfere with Naruto’s control. He knew better than that, and Naruto was quick to silence him with a gentle but stern reprimand. The heavy presence of Kurama settled back in, quieting to a low rumble, and the control Naruto had exerted to calm the fox managed to work the same kind of magic on him, too.  

Instead of fisting his hands at his sides and snapping, Naruto took a deep breath and forced himself to stand up straight, push his shoulders back, relax. There was no point to running in circles, asking his friends for help in finding the woman he loved, because they were her friends too.

And he had hurt her.

He didn’t blame them for choosing her side—he understood, and he accepted.

But he couldn’t make things right if he couldn’t find her. He needed to apologize to her. It was, in that moment, the single most important thing in his world: the need to look into Hinata’s seeing glass eyes and tell her sincerely that he was sorry.

“Fine,” he said, still festering under the surface, but contained. “Don’t tell me where she is. But if you see her, tell her I’m looking for her. Tell her I have to talk to her.”

Neji’s blank expression never broke, and Tenten merely crossed her arms over her chest, lithe muscles rippling. Naruto nodded, accepting once more, and missed the subtle softening of Tenten’s expression as he turned on his heel and headed out of the arena. Before he made it completely to the door, his hands on the frame, he turned over his shoulder and said, “Ah, also. Sorry to interrupt your training.”

He flickered and disappeared, and in the sudden lapse of his presence Tenten turned to Neji and snorted.

“Uzumaki Naruto, remembering his manners,” she said, lips kicking up into a smile as Neji glanced down at her. Tenten elbowed him in the side, laughing. “Hinata’s influence truly is incredible.”

✧

Just because he wasn’t going to get any help from their friends didn’t mean that he was going to give up looking for her; after all, he was still one of Konoha’s most stubborn shinobi, with the strongest and most relentless of wills.

Regardless, the sun chased him all the way across the sky until it tired and tucked itself away behind the mountains, and Naruto, too, retired to his apartment.

On the third step leading up to his tiny veranda, he felt the sudden presence of chakra from within his home. He wasted no time in dashing up the rest of the stairs and bursting through the doorway, wide eyes surveying the front room until they found her, tracing over every inch of her that he could see, cataloguing every minute change from the last time they’d faced each other.

“Hinata,” He gasped, and could not have cared less about the way his voice trembled. His body ached, not so much from physical exertion but from an emotional lapse, a heart bent on breaking, and an endless search he thought would never end.

Hinata turned from his mantle where she had been fingering one of his framed photos, and cast her heavy eyes over his haggard appearance. He took a single step inside, slid the door shut behind him. He watched her carefully, when all he really wanted was to rush to her side, to fold her into the waiting and welcoming heat of his arms. He wanted to press kisses to her temples, her cheeks, tug lightly at her ear, silently and playfully asking for forgiveness. He wanted to touch her.

He didn’t move, barely breathed. He let her set the rules, the pace, the proceedings. He watched her set the frame back down and noticed offhandedly that it was his genin team’s first group shot, when they were just kids. She opened herself to him in a single step, though the lines of her shoulders were still caged and defensive, just as they had been when she’d walked away from him the week before. But she faced him, didn’t back down from his focused stare, or the way that he couldn’t help but to allow himself to trail his eyes over every inch of her, a man starved and saved in an instant.

“Naruto-kun,” she began, and her voice was that controlled kind of softness that meant he was still in trouble. Not her usual soft tones, fluid and warm and everything he could let himself drown in with pleasure. No, not that kind.

This was an indolent tone belying an undercurrent of danger, a beautifully veiled trap. It matched the casual stance she held, though her shoulders broke the mold and exposed some of her vulnerability to him. He knew that she allowed it, this glimpse past her anger. Her stance reminded him of Sasuke’s bastard older brother, and the way he sometimes became so still that the air around him froze, too.

Naruto swallowed.

“I hear you’ve had a busy day,” Hinata said at last, tilting her head.

“It was nothing,” he said, hoping that she’d understand that what he meant was that it had been nothing because he’d found her. Or, technically he supposed that she had found him. Cornered him, rather.

He was getting that a lot today.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he whispered suddenly, the words nearly gushing from him. It was obvious that she knew he’d been looking for her all day, and it didn’t matter that he’d nearly exhausted himself doing so, or that he’d been so worried his heart had felt ready to fall through his feet by the time he felt her chakra within his home. All that mattered was that she was here, and he had to make it right again. “I need to talk to you.”

“Do you?” She challenged, eyebrows rising, and Naruto fumbled his own heartbeat.

“Yeah,” he insisted, taking another step towards her. “Yeah, I do.”

The corners of Hinata’s eyes narrowed, and just like that, Naruto stopped in his tracks, frozen to the spot. His heart raced, thundering against his rib cage, the only part of him he felt moving.

“Have you considered,” Hinata began again, shifting her weight so subtly Naruto almost missed it. Even as she glared at him, receiving him with an icy refusal to allow him anywhere near her, he couldn’t help but to admire her. His eyes shifted over her and chills raced down his spine as he saw the steel in her, in the way she demanded respect from him. He had to put actual effort into keeping a smile from his face as he considered what his teammate’s reactions would be if they knew how formidable an opponent Hinata could be, in terms of mental warfare. Hell, he thought, she might even give Sasuke’s icy family members a run for their money. “That I might not want to speak with you?”

Naruto studied her, eyes flashing. He didn’t say anything about her being in his apartment, so clearly waiting for him. He only said, “You don’t?”

Hinata’s eyes dropped, her eyelashes casting shadows over her cheeks, hiding her expression. Naruto risked another step forward, even when she glanced back up at him and her stare pierced right through him.

“I know I’ve hurt you,” he said lowly, voice fractured. “Last week…I messed up, Hinata.”

“A singular occurrence,” she whispered, and Naruto didn’t understand. Her eyes met his again and held, and he was frustrated at his own inability to understand. “As though you have done one thing, and that is all.”

Naruto frowned, shoulders caving in. “I don’t understand.”

“Before I agreed to marry you,” she began suddenly, shifting tactics. “Do you remember what I told you I needed?”

Naruto lifted a hand to scratch at the nape of his neck, his expression pinching as he tried to remember exactly what she’d said in that moment. It was difficult for him to remember much of the words in that memory, beyond the fact that she had said yes. Mostly, he remembered the gentleness of her expression, and the way that the sun had ascended behind her, casting her in every shade of promise. He closed his eyes and he could remember the way the wind picked up the tails of her hair, and how he’d moved forward and tucked it all away behind her ears, holding her face in his hands, pressing their foreheads together.

Pressing their smiles together in a kiss.

Remembering the finer details of that memory brought with it new clarity, and suddenly Naruto did remember.

“Partnership,” he answered, eyes slowly coming open. Something infinitesimal in her expression shifted, but it was so quick Naruto couldn’t catch it.

“Yes,” she agreed. “I wanted you to promise me that we would be equals.”

“We are,” he blurted immediately, heart still racing, though suddenly with a frantic edge to it. “Hinata, of course we are.”

“Of course,” she repeated, testing the words within the confines of her voice. “Forgive my rudeness, Naruto-kun, but I disagree.”

Naruto felt fractured, raw. Her utter lack of emotion reminded him of Sasuke when something hurt him, usually his clan, and he covered the hurt with anger that pushed through the cracks of a mask of apathy. It was not a look he had ever wanted to see on Hinata’s face, and it was only then that he started to realize just how much he had hurt her.

“Explain it to me,” he implored, and though he felt close to shattering his voice was steady, stern. “I need to understand, so I can fix it.”

Something gentle flickered across her eyes, dangerously close to affection, before she swept it away in the next second. “Some things cannot be fixed.”

“But this can,” he said with certainty, lifting his chin.

His refusal to give up on them was rewarded with a fine tick in the corner of her lips, a fractured smile to match the jagged edges of his frayed emotional control.

“You are a Hokage candidate,” Hinata said, and Naruto tried not to be rocked by the sudden and bizarre change in topic. “I have stood by you, advised you, encouraged you. You’ve been preparing for this your entire life, and still I wanted to be by your side to support you.”

“And you have,” he responded easily, confused. He took another step towards her, and she was almost within his reach, so close he could smell the traces of lavender on her skin. “I never would have made it this far along without you there to help me. I need you with me. It’s just like you said, we’re partners.”

Just one more step—

Hinata’s eyes narrowed at the corners, and everything in Naruto stilled. His mouth went dry, and her chin lifted.

“Then where have you been?” Her tone washed over him in frigid reprimand, tone trembling only slightly in the undercurrent. “I am to take over my clan in less than a month. Where have you been?”

Naruto’s spine snapped straight until his shoulders were thrust back and his chest ached thrice over, his mouth falling open in sudden understanding. But Hinata, usually so quiet and reticent, was not finished.

“I do not require you to be invested in the politics of my clan until you have the title of Nanadaime before your name,” she explained, “but as my partner, you should be present with me when I seek your advice on the matter.”

Naruto remained stock still, unmoving. He watched Hinata’s features, and the way that she finally allowed emotions to flit across her face. Shame curled through him, and the memories of Hinata seeking his advice on the topic coiled behind his eyes. He flinched when he remembered his careless rebuffs, claiming only that he would support her in whatever she wanted, but that he knew nothing of clans.

It was true that she had been supporting him the whole way through, even before he had returned her feelings. She had always been an incredible friend to him, invested in his care, really thinking things through to give him a complete answer when he sought her out for advice. And then later, when they had been together long enough to know every secret in every line of one another’s skin, she had still been there beside him, supporting him. She stood by him when the counsel argued against him to Tsunade, and had held steady when they turned her under direct fire as a future clan leader who would have to deal with him politically.

And yet he had done nothing more than offer her false reassurances for her coming role as the leader of her clan, simply because he didn’t understand the politics, and didn’t think to try.

The weight of this realization crushed him, bent his shoulders into a hunch and made him duck his head low. He realized that she must have been living under this weight for some time now, and he almost didn’t want to consider for how long. He’d thought that he had been growing, so happy to have her at his side, but he was a fool.

She had demanded a partnership.

And he had only been focusing on himself.

“Hinata,” he breathed, and suddenly a simple apology didn’t feel like it would be enough. How was he ever going to apologize for this?

Hinata’s tone gentled. She said, “I understand if you have felt uncertain. It is difficult to understand clan politics when you are raised outside of their restrictions.”

But Naruto watched the steel of her spine reform itself, and her next words were steady and unflinching. “But I will not give my everything to someone who won’t give theirs in return, Naruto-kun. I will not settle for less than the partnership you promised me.”

And then, with fire: “I stand by what I say. Will you?”

Naruto’s heart thudded, a one-two beat against his chest, and admiration for her bubbled up through his veins. He stood there in silence and gazed at her with open admiration and a little bit of heat that he couldn’t keep from his eyes. This was the strength of character that Naruto had always admired in her, the gentleness that resided even amidst the unbending iron of her will. That she would stand before him, the boy she had always loved grown into the man she freely offered her heart, and demand that he respect her…chills raced down his spine, and his eyes became heavier with exposed heat.

He took that last step towards her even when her expression grew another edge towards foreboding, and allowed his hands to slide over her shoulders, fingers delving into her hair. He pulled her against him even as her hands remained at her sides, stubbornly holding her ground. That was fine with him—this wasn’t a trick, he wasn’t trying to win her over with affection.

He had just always communicated better with touch.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, lips close enough to nearly touch her ear. His cheek pressed to hers and his hand held the back of her head so that she was tucked gently against him, her nose just barely touching the hinge of his jaw. “I understand. I get it. And I’m sorry.”

He warred with himself in those next few moments, about whether or not he had the right to ask how long this had been going on. He didn’t want to know because it frightened him, this careless side of him he hadn’t known. But he wasn’t a coward, and he didn’t run from his demons anymore. He faced them.

But this wasn’t about him, and the reminder of that was what held his tongue. Making her say the words would do nothing to help her, so he remained silent, and held her as close to him as she allowed.

“Hey, Hinata,” he whispered against her hair, and he felt her hands lift only slightly, just enough to grasp the hem of his jacket. “I’m gonna try my best not to ever put you in this position again. I’m gonna do everything in my power to make sure of it. I keep my promises.”

The last was a sharp self-imposed reprimand against her shoulder, as he tucked his nose in against her throat. Hinata’s hands moved up, then, sliding around his back and pulling him in closer to her. He felt the sting of tears in his eyes as she breathed against him and he was reminded of her gentle nature, more loving than he would probably ever deserve.

She pressed her lips against his throat, the sweetest forgiveness. “I’ll hold you to it.”

“Sorry to say this so late,” he started, his mood turning from the shame he knew he wouldn’t be rid of for many, many weeks to the light humor that he had taught himself to survive with as an orphan. “But you’re going to have to work hard with me. I’m a moron after all.”

Hinata pulled back, fingers leaving his back to come up and grasp his cheeks until he was staring into her steady eyes.

“You are not a moron, Uzumaki Naruto,” she said, and then the corner of her lips kicked up in quiet delight. “But if I find you lacking on our agreement again…”

Hinata let her sentiment hang freely, and Naruto swallowed, the heavy click of the motion loud in the quiet air of his apartment. After a long moment, Hinata’s head dipped almost imperceptibly, and she slid her hands to the nape of his neck. She pulled him in and he went willingly, capturing her lips in his own, relishing in the sheer intensity of how much she loved him.

Naruto wanted to show her how much he loved her, too; deeply, endlessly, wildly. He pushed further into her space until they knocked against the wall, his chest pressed so tightly to hers that her shoulders were flat against the plaster. Hinata gasped into his mouth and he moved forward instantly to slide his tongue in, tracing the edges of her teeth in forgiveness.

He didn’t want her to misunderstand this, though. He may not be good at explaining things, but he’d been with Hinata long enough to know that communication was key, and that miscommunication could be downright lethal. So after he spent several long, diligent moments nipping at her bottom lip and sucking away the sting, he pulled back just enough to see the way her swollen lips trembled, and starlight caught in her eyes.

“This isn’t bribery,” he said, mentally cursing himself for being so unclear. “I mean, I’m not trying to win you over or anything with this, okay? This is just…me. Loving you.”

Hinata studied his expression for several moments, her fingertips playing with the long tendrils of hair by his ears, gently massaging the delicate skin there. Naruto held himself as steady as he could over her, coiled with heat and anticipation, but unwilling to press on without her consent. Finally, she nodded, a simple and slow acceptance.

And it was easy, to move back in, to capture her lips with his own and show her how much he loved her with the insistence of his mouth pressing against hers, the drag of calluses on his hands, moving over the skin of her hips.

The sincerity of feeling in the racing of his honest pulse.