Chapter 28
The leaves turn, and change, and fall.
Autumn takes its time moving through the streets of Konoha, fingers flushed and dripping with gold, turning pastel life molten. It takes Naruto by surprise, as it usually does, despite the measured shifting of colors and temperature. He blinks as he glances up into the trees, watches the way the leaves turn under the gentle touch of sunlight, flickering in the breeze.
He watches some of them fall, and when he brings his eyes back down to earth and feels his attention leap instinctively to the woman heading towards him, he thinks, yeah.
I know what that feels like.
To fall.
Hyuuga Hinata takes his breath away; it’s more than the elegant slopes of her cheeks, perpetually flushed; more than the way the sunlight catches in her eyelashes and holds; more than the simple change in her when her eyes find his, and everything about her gentles.
It’s the kindness with which she reaches out to touch him, a question and a greeting—
“Naruto-kun,” she says, and her voice is every swift and sudden shift in the temperature around them, sending chills down his spine. “How are you?”
“Good,” he says, and it comes out quick and messy, just like him, just like his feelings. His blunders only make her smile, gentle twists in the corners of her lips, that same genuine affection she holds for him moving over her expression in every shade of warmth. He catches his breath, watches a leaf flutter through the air between them, and catch in Hinata’s hair.
There isn’t an ounce of hesitation in him—never has been, really. He reaches out to her even as he corrects himself, lets his fingertips trail over the heated curve of her cheekbone until he can feel the jagged edges of the leaf against his skin. There’s still some green on the stem, bleeding out into yellows and oranges and the deepest of reds, just there at his fingertips.
“Good,” he repeats, and feels one side of his mouth tick up in amusement when Hinata merely blinks up at him, wide-eyed and captivated. It’s still such a curious thing, he thinks, that out of everyone in the world Hinata has chosen him.
It’d been weeks since he had finally told her he loved her, there in the meadow with the light of fireflies catching in her eyes, twin pools of heated wonder. Weeks since she’d fought alongside him to rescue her sister, to prevent unnecessary destruction at Toneri’s misguided hands.
He carefully extricates the leaf from her hair, fingers twirling the stem in the short space between them, a hair’s breadth away from Hinata’s lips. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing much,” she responds, finally breaking eye contact to shyly duck her head, the toe of her sandal scuffing the dirt.
It’s sudden, and impulsive, but the moment the idea alights in his mind Naruto feels himself reaching back out to her, the leaf in his hands falling to the ground between them. He traces the smoothed edge of her jaw with his fingers, eyes heavy-lidded with affection, and asks, “Will you come with me?”
Hinata does not ask where, or why. Her trust in him is implicit and exhilarating, and her hand is steady when she reaches out to take his, to twine their fingers together and follow his lead. Naruto’s strides are purposeful, a pace quicker than leisure, and Hinata doesn’t question that, either.
He brings her to a familiar place, one all their own, a meadow full of life and light and surrounded entirely in Konoha’s infamous greenery. In the distance, the sun makes its way over the mountains, casting the sky in liquid tones of flame, hindered only by a handful of clouds.
Naruto stops and Hinata is there in front of him, close enough to touch, to hold. It’s easy, then, to pull her into his arms, to press her against him until he can feel the subtle push of her pulse against his skin, a promise and a reminder.
“Hinata,” he breathes, and her name is a prayer. He runs his fingers through the long length of her hair and feels the way she trembles against him, her fingers pressed between their chests. He pulls back only so much as to see her face, the watery gleam of her eyes, unmistakably joyful.
“Here,” she says, so achingly quiet and sincere. “You’ve brought us back to this place.”
“Our place,” he agrees, leaning forward to touch their foreheads together just once, an intimate gesture of affection.
“I have incredible clarity of the moments we’ve had here,” Hinata admits, and Naruto watches the way her cheeks shift from cream to rose right before his eyes. He reaches up and runs his knuckles ever so lightly against her temple, her cheek. He leans in and it’s easy, as it always has been with her, as it always will be, to press his lips to hers and feel her melt into him in turn. He pulls back a moment later, his chest tight with nerves and anticipation, and he watches the way she watches him.
“I have incredible plans for future moments we can have here,” he says, surprised that the words come to him so easily. So cleanly. And maybe it’s love that does that, at times. Cleans up the messes it makes. Hinata’s eyes widen, and Naruto smiles.
“Will you be mine?” He asks, knuckles trailing lightly over her skin, her breath against his lips. “Can I be yours? Forever?”
“Yes,” she says, without hesitation, so easily, so beautifully. Tears turn her eyes glassy and Naruto lifts her against his chest, feels her arms wrap around his neck, and he presses every promise of memories yet to be made of love and support against her lips.
The leaves continued to shift, to change, to fall; for new life, new beginnings, and new stories.
And Uzumaki Naruto does the same, with Hinata at his side.
Forever.