SHINO

The first thing Shino ever really noticed about Naruto was that he wasn’t scared of the beetles. The blond had once even joked about pranking the girls with them, which Shino greatly disapproved of but still found a small amount of humor in. 

The two of them often ended up sitting near each other at the academy as they were both ostracized, though in Shino’s case it was mostly his own purposeful doing. Naruto never wrinkled his face up when the beetles were particularly loud or shook in disgust when they crawled out from behind his glasses or jacket. The kid barely seemed to notice anything strange at all. He’d often wondered if that was because Naruto didn’t care or because Naruto didn’t realize how different Shino actually was. 

That said, he didn’t like Naruto very much, even if he did appreciate his genuine acceptance. Naruto was loud and Shino had sensitive hearing. Naruto made a lot of sudden and spastic movements that made Shino’s beetles nervous. And perhaps the worst thing: Naruto was an idiot. Even if Shino did manage to ignore the physicality of being around Naruto, he still wouldn’t be able to have a conversation with him. 

The only thing Naruto ever talked about was ramen, not understanding what was happening in class, or random things he’d heard off the street. The last topic seemed to be the only time Naruto held himself back though, which was a shame because it was the only interesting thing about him. 

All that is to say, when Shino was placed on Team 8 and stopped seeing Naruto every day, he didn’t really care or notice. He knew Naruto had somehow gotten his hitai-ate, though he didn’t fully believe the rumors going around about how the kid had beaten a chunin. He knew Naruto was on a team with Sakura and Sasuke. And that was it. And that was fine. 

Until a couple months after the team assignments Naruto plopped down in the chair across from Shino at his favorite dango place. Naruto was holding a stick of lumpy dango that looked like it came out of the garbage. In front of Shino was a plate of all strawberry dango, his favorite of the three classic flavors. “How’d you get them to give you only the pink ones?” Naruto asked with clear consternation. The annoyed puckered look on Naruto’s face was so familiar it almost made Shino smile. 

“I asked,” he replied. 

Naruto’s expression smoothed out into true confusion. “What? Really? I can barely get them to give me normal dango!” Naruto gestured with his stick of the treats and Shino looked once again at the pitiful sight of the food. 

Something sharper than pity and softer than anger made his stomach clench and Shino pushed his plate of dango to the middle of the table and said, “You can have some of mine if you’d like.” His beetles hummed a little louder inside him and he wondered if they were picking up on his own confusion at his actions. 

“Wow, Shino, really?!” Naruto exclaimed, already reaching for the plate. He shoved two into his mouth faster than Shino could see and chewed them aggressively while he eyed Shino like he was going to take back the offer to share at any second. His stomach clenched again and Shino hummed sharply in annoyance. 

“I would not have said it if I did not mean it, Naruto.” 

Naruto wasn’t listening though, his eyes had gone comically large as he stared at the plate. Very slowly, glancing up at Shino and back to the plate several times, Naruto reached for another pink ball and popped it into his mouth. “This is really good!” 

“Have you never had the strawberry kind?” Shino asked. 

“No, I have, it’s just never tasted like these!” Naruto shoved another in his large mouth and then froze. He snatched his hands back to rest in his lap as he chewed more slowly. His eyes fell to half-lidded as he visibly enjoyed the treat. 

He knew that Naruto was some sort of pariah, rumors of a demon inside the child and so on. While Naruto may not be his favorite person, the boy didn’t act like a demon of any kind. Shino glared at the stick of dango forgotten on the table in Naruto’s excitement and sneered as a thought occurred to him. Maybe Naruto loved ramen so much because it was the only food that wasn’t tampered with before it was given to him. 

“How’s your team?” Naruto asked, hands fidgeting almost violently in his lap. The blond was looking anywhere but at the plate. 

Shino answered, “Kurenai-sensei is a highly competent kunoichi, she will make a more than adequate sensei, I think.” 

“And your teammates?” 

Shino could feel his face pull into an expression of distaste. He knew Naruto would not be able to see it thanks to the coat and sunglasses, but he still actively attempted to smooth his face out. “Hinata is fine, Kiba is loud and reckless.” 

Naruto cocked his head to the side like a dog and asked with clear confusion, “You don’t like Kiba?” 

“We are not a compatible duo, I do not think.” 

“Huh,” Naruto breathed out, snatching one more dango ball. “That’s weird, I always thought you two were really similar.” 

Shino blinked seven times in concession. “What?” 

“You know, you and Kiba. You’re both really confident in who you are, you know? You’re both smart where it counts, like with shinobi stuff and knowing about charka.” 

“Chakra,” Shino corrected absently. 

“And both of you don’t pull your punches, you just say whatever’s on your mind, you know? Oh! And neither of you ever treated me like I was absolute trash, either!” 

“I thought you were incredibly annoying.” 

Naruto pointed at Shino’s face with a finger far too close for his personal comfort and shouted, “Ha! See what I mean?!” Then Naruto shrugged his shoulders and settled back in his chair with a grin, “And yeah, I know. Kiba thought so too, but that’s fine. I’m used to that. Sakura-chan was telling me earlier that I’m vexing and irksome.” Naruto paused for a short moment, eyes dropping from Shino’s face. “Do you happen to know what those words mean?” 

Shino, who was still reeling from the comparison to Kiba, said flatly, “Annoying.” 

Naruto’s shoulders dropped but he nodded with a small grin, “That’s what I figured.” One of Shino’s beetles crept across the table top without his permission and crawled onto Naruto’s arm. 

Shino stiffened with embarrassment and horror when he noticed, but Naruto just glanced down at it once with apparent disinterest before looking back at Shino and asking, “What does Kurenai-sensei do? My sensei always shows up at least three hours late and also he only has one eye for some reason and he smells like dog and blood.” 

His beetle disappeared up Naruto’s jacket sleeve and again, the blond didn’t react. Didn’t even reach to scratch at little legs on his skin or smack at his arm in disgust. Could he not feel the bug? “She is a genjutsu specialist,” he said, trying desperately to focus back on the conversation. He took a dango with a slightly shaky hand and put it in his mouth, chewing very slowly as Naruto seemed to fall into his thoughts. 

Another beetle tried to leave Shino and head for Naruto but he managed to scoop it up in his fingers and deposit it back on his own arm. His shift of attention meant he missed an entirely different beetle that scuttled right up to Naruto’s hand. Shino looked over just in time to see Naruto place a finger in front of the thing so it could climb on and walk in a circle around his wrist and through the gaps in his fingers. Naruto just hummed and kicked his feet absently. 

Shino had never seen Naruto so quiet. When he stopped to really look at him he noticed there were large circles under blue eyes, his tan skin was dirty where he could see it, and his hair was scorched around the edges. The jumpsuit he always wore hung off his frame like he was skin and bones and Shino’s eyes returned to the dango in front of him. He pushed the plate closer to his companion and said, “I’m full. We should not let food go to waste.” 

Naruto smiled hard enough to nearly squeeze both his eyes shut and quickly started demolishing the rest of the dango. Shino watched with very mixed emotions. He pulsed his chakra lightly and both his beetles obediently left Naruto and returned to him. Naruto watched them leave and asked, “How many of those do you have?” The question held no disdain or hidden disgust, just pure curiousity. Shino smiled softly to himself. 

Before he could answer the question, the peace of the small shop was broken. Sakura flipped the curtains at the front with violent drama and then shouted, “Naruto, you complete idiot!” Shino winced, because if there was someone louder than Naruto, it was Sakura. “I’ve been looking for you all over!” 

She stalked over to their table and cuffed the back of Naruto’s head with her fist. Naruto just winced and pouted up at her, “What do you mean, Sakura?” 

“You left so quick after training that Kakashi-sensei sent me to give you a message!” She hit him again and Shino eyed the blond’s reaction. No anger at the treatment, more like a resignation and perhaps even a flutter of happiness. Odd. 

The two descended into a bickering argument about Sakura not being a messenger and Naruto not knowing she was looking for him. It was loud and abrasive and Shino stood up before they’d finished. “I’ll be leaving now. Goodbye, Naruto, Sakura.” Naruto’s pout deepened but then he gave Shino a bright smile and an enthusiastic wave, which just sent Sakura into more shouting as he supposedly almost smacked her in the face. 

On his walk home he comforted himself that he may be on a team with Kiba, but at least it wasn’t Sakura. In fact, Shino couldn’t stop thinking about what Naruto had said about Kiba. How they were similar. It was very curious. The only thing he thought himself and the dog-like boy had in common was their agreement that Hinata should be protected. He liked Hinata, she was sweet and determined even if she struggled with speaking and standing up for her own opinion. Those were things that could be practiced. 

The next time Shino ran into Naruto it was at the same dango place, but Shino wasn’t alone. Kiba was sitting across from him, like Naruto had been before, and they were slowly destroying the huge plate of dango and sweet buns between them. They were also arguing. He was pretty sure that Kiba had only followed him to the shop to continue the argument they started in training earlier. 

When he spotted Naruto the blond was already making his way through the tables and benches over to them. Shino greeted him as he plopped himself down on the bench next to Kiba and across from Shino, “Good afternoon, Naruto.” 

Naruto grinned and replied, “Hey, Shino! Kiba!” 

Kiba echoed Naruto’s grin but with more teeth, “Yo, loser, what are you doing here?” 

Naruto shrugged and leaned back as far as the bench allowed him. “Nothing much. I was looking for Shino, actually.” He glanced at the plate at the center of the table and asked, “Do you have a sweet tooth, Shino?” 

Shino gave a shallow nod and replied, “My beetles like the easily broken down energy that simple sugars provide.” 

“You should see him at training,” Kiba said. “He’s got sweets stuffed in every pocket of that coat, I swear.” 

“Is that why you wear the coat?” Naruto asked. 

Shino shook his head. “No, I just like the coat.” 

“Oh, yeah, I totally get that!” Naruto replied. He pinched the front of his orange jacket and said, “The guy who I managed to buy this from said no one wanted it, yeah? That I could have it at double the price if I’d get it out of the shop, and man was that a good decision! Turns out I love orange!” 

“You mean half the price?” Kiba taunted. 

“Nah, who would sell something at half its price?” 

Shino felt a sliver of dread dig itself between his ribs, where the other pieces of information he’d learned about Naruto had burrowed themselves. Kiba’s face twisted up and he asked, “What are you talking about?” 

Shino decided, uncharacteristically, to intervene. “How’s your team, Naruto?” 

Naruto immediately launched into a story about how Sasuke had blown him out of a tree earlier with his fire jutsu but Naruto managed to tangle ninja wire around the other’s legs and trip him face first into the dirt. “Sasuke’s super good, right? He’s got all these ‘instincts’ Kakashi-sensei calls them, but those are useless when it comes to pranks, you know? And people said I was wasting my time with all those during the academy! I’ll show them!” 

He was talking like he always did, a tad too loud and with every fiber of his being. But to Shino’s eyes he was lagging. His movements were jerky and his smiles were fewer and farther between than last time. “And Sakura-chan! She was practicing kunai throwing earlier today, well we both were, because Kakashi-sensei was busy with the bastard, like always, and I was asking her these questions, you know? Like, she’s always talking about numbers and math when it comes to her aim, and I didn’t understand them, but she ended up throwing her kunai at me instead, because I asked too many questions. But I’m getting better on my own, anyways! Soon I’ll be able to match her too! And I can throw them stronger than her, so really, I think we’re in about the same place.” 

Kiba rolled his eyes and said, “Shut up, Naruto. Breathe between your sentences, you idiot.” 

Naruto rubbed at the back of his neck and apologized. His eyes were avoiding the food the same way they had last time, and Shino was almost surprised when the blond didn’t attempt to take any. He just kept up the strange politeness about it which Shino had the feeling had nothing to do with actual manners. “How about your training, Kiba?” Naruto asked. “Learn any super cool new jutsus from Kurenee?” 

“Kurenai,” Shino corrected. 

“Kurenai,” Naruto repeated. 

Kiba launched into his own tale on training and Shino reached forward to grab a sweet bun and hand it to Naruto, who accepted it with a wide grin and a thanks. Naruto ate it in two bites and then continued his purposeful lack of awareness of the table in general. He peppered Kiba with questions and taunts and insults and the two were quickly taken up in a debate about which one of them was stronger. 

Shino sighed and prodded another bun over to Naruto’s hands and settled in to wait them out. Naruto ate the second bun slower, and between taunts. When Shino’s beetles got curious again and a few wandered over towards Naruto, Shino didn’t bother stopping them. Naruto just laid his hand on the table and allowed them to climb up under his jacket sleeve like last time. 

Kiba stopped halfway through a sentence when he noticed them. Shino cut the Inuzuka off before he could comment. “You said your sensei was Kakashi, right? Would that be the Kakashi Hatake?” he asked Naruto. 

“Yeah, that’s the guy. He’s a lazy pervert.” 

Kiba guffawed and asked, “What?” 

“I’m serious!” Naruto exclaimed, wiping his sticky hands on his pants legs, “He’s always late, only ever does anything when he’s giving Sasuke special training, and he reads those brightly colored porn books all the time. Like even out in the village.” 

“He’s the copy-nin, you know,” Shino said. “He’s a renowned jonin and he’s one of the strongest ninja in fire country.” 

“No way!” Naruto denied. 

“Oh, yeah, my mom’s mentioned him. Hatakes are, like, somehow related to us, I don’t know,” Kiba waved it off. “But she says he’s been a ninja since he was like five. She also said he was annoying as fuck and that Hana could learn a lot from him.” 

“Is that why he smells so strongly of dog?” Naruto asked. “Like you guys have dogs, right? Is he around your compound a lot?” 

Kiba shook his head, “Nah, man. I’ve never seen him around. It’s like a real distant relation, back in the warring clans time and everything.” 

Naruto looked baffled but nodded his head gamely. Then all three of them sat up a little straighter when they heard Sakura’s shout of Naruto’s name. Shino got a feeling of deja vu and looked at Naruto. The blond stood up from his bench and waved goodbye to them. “See ya later, guys!” he shouted as he ran out through the curtains and out into the street. 

Kiba and Shino quickly finished off their treats and started walking home. Kiba was quiet and thoughtful looking, but didn’t say anything before they branched off to go their separate ways. Shino didn’t know if he was disappointed or relieved. 

Naruto seemed to run into Shino and his teammates consistently over the next couple of weeks. Kiba and the blond would tackle each other into wrestling matches and Hinata would blush and stutter but smile. Shino couldn’t stop his beetles from crawling under the other’s clothes and found himself increasingly interested in the details that Naruto let slip in every conversation. 

He wasn’t being trained properly, that much was obvious. Anytime his sensei was actually mentioned was in a story about Sasuke. 

His teammates had reportedly called him annoying, a pariah, a waste of space, dead last, idiot, and a full dictionary of other derogatory things. Kiba had actually stopped calling Naruto anything similar. Dropped the loser and idiot to be replaced with blondie and apricot. 

Naruto was clearly unwell. His beetles could feel it through his chakra and it was obvious if looked for. He always looked exhausted, even when brimming with energy he looked so very tired. His eyes dulled with every passing day and his chakra got darker. His beetles liked Naruto’s chakra regardless, but they could feel the difference.

He brought his concerns to Kurenai one evening. She had looked angry and then promised him she’d take care of it. The next day Naruto ran up to them as they were finishing their team training for the day with a wide smile and a story about how Kakashi had actually helped him with his shadow clones. It didn’t sound like all that much to expect from a sensei, but the blond was too ecstatic for Shino to bring it up.

Kiba had noticed too. They talked about it sometimes. Wondering what was happening with Team 7 and Naruto. Hinata had spied on Naruto’s team for a day at their behest, not that she took much convincing, as Shino and Kiba maintained a careful perimeter to prevent her from being caught. She watched for an hour only, relaying in a monotone what she saw. Sakura hit Naruto on the head 12 times in that hour. Sasuke mocked him the entire time, and Kakashi said two sentences. 

They left worried and angry. But anytime they tried to bring up Naruto’s teammates with him, he became defensive of them. Sasuke was a bastard, but a genius. Sakura had a temper, but was beautiful and spirited. Sasuke was a rival, not a bully. Sakura was strong, not abusive. Over time the blond’s disagreement with them became less earnest and more rote. Like he was going through the actions. Like he didn’t know what was going on anymore. 

It came to a head one day in the same dango shop as the first meeting. Kiba, Shino, and Naruto were gathered around a corner table. It had chairs instead of benches and a plate of buns between them. Naruto snatched a couple every now and then would eat them almost guiltily until Shino or Kiba handed him another one. 

Shino’s beetles were crawling over Naruto’s arms, more visible than usual as the blond had taken his jacket off and hung it over the back of his chair. It was damaged from Sasuke’s fire again and smelled strongly of smoke. Kiba eyed the beetles like he always did and finally asked the question he’d been keeping in for weeks. “Why are you so comfortable around them?” 

Naruto looked once again baffled. It was a familiar expression for the boy. He looked down at the beetles marching in circles over his skin and then said, “They’re normal, right? His bugs don’t even bite or anything!” 

“They’re normal for me, yes,” Shino said. “My clan are the holders of this particular species of parasitic beetle.” 

Naruto just shrugged, “Whatever, I like your bugs a lot more than mine.”

Shino cocked his head to the side, “What?” he asked. 

Kiba and him shared a concerned glance. Kiba’s top lip was pulled up to show his fangs in a growing anger. “What do you mean by that, blondie?” he asked. 

“Oh, you know, the bugs in my bed really like to bite. Those flat reddish ones, you know? I stopped sleeping in my bed a couple years ago actually. Every time I tried to buy new blankets or sheets there’d be more of those bitey guys. The floor is much better, though my blankets are still pretty bad sometimes. And the ones in my food, those don’t bite but it’s hard to eat around them, you know?” Naruto scratched at his head and continued, “Once I had these things in my hair that made me itch like crazy and they left white things in my hair and it was awful. I got kicked out of the academy until they went away finally. I missed a whole unit on taijutsu and I never got to learn it. It sucked.” 

“Naruto-” Kiba said but couldn’t continue, tongue tied like never before.

“Sometimes I sleep at one of the training grounds too, because I’m too tired to go home, but if I sleep in the wrong spot I wake up itchy all over and there’s these tiny tiny bugs that hop all over and I can never get rid of them for weeks.” 

“Those are fleas,” Shino said flatly. It was the only thing he could say, the only thing he could think of. 

“Huh, okay. Well, anyways, these guys are awesome. They don’t make me itchy at all!” 

Shino thought about Hinata’s scared eyes at the beginning of their training, when she was so unsure of herself and her opinions. Of the way she’d sometimes come to training with bruises on her skin that had nothing to do with taijutsu. How Hinata rarely spent time in her own home anymore, but instead went home with Kiba to his clan home. How she was happier and healthier. 

What was Naruto’s team doing? How had they not noticed the obvious signs of abuse and distress in their teammate? 

The table fell into a long silence that Naruto seemed completely ignorant of. He was shoving another bun in his mouth and humming to himself. Shino looked to Kiba to find the other boy nearly vibrating in his seat. “Hey, Naruto, Akamaru gets fleas too, sometimes he even gives them to me. My sister always gives us this shampoo that helps get rid of ‘em. I could get some for you, if you want.” 

Naruto looked up with shock. “Wait, really? You can get rid of them that easily?” 

“Sure you can. My sister’s a vet, she knows about that kind of stuff.” 

“That’d be awesome, Kiba! You’re the best!” 

“I have never seen where you live, Naruto,” Shino said. “It had not occurred to me until this moment that I have no idea where in the village you reside.” 

Naruto looked uncomfortable as he replied, “It’s not much, you’re not missing out. You’ve got the whole clan house thing, no need to spend your time in my little apartment.” 

But Shino very much wanted to see it. Wanted to burn it down without having set an eye on it at all, in fact. “I can help you with your bug problems,” he said instead. 

“How?” Naruto asked suspiciously. 

“They listen to me, for short periods of time. I can use my chakra to sync with their bodily systems and nerve complexes to order them to do simple tasks. Not like my own beetles, which can follow quite complex lines of thought via my chakra, but I could handle moving the pests from your apartment.” 

The blond looked eager and uncertain in equal amounts. “You don’t need to do that, Shino. I can deal with it, I’m used to it, you know. I got it.” 

“I have no doubt, but why deal with it when it is a detriment to your health? Why turn away a solution to your problem?” 

“Yeah, come on, Nar,” Kiba pressed. His rage had been stifled so it wasn’t shaking his body with its intensity but Shino’s beetles were responding to the strong charge of the boy’s emotionally heavy chakra. “If you don’t show us, I’ll just have Akamaru sniff your apartment out for us.” 

Naruto kicked at the leg of the unused chair at the table and replied, “Fine. But you can’t tell anyone, okay? I get enough break-ins as it is.” 

Shino’s hands twitched violently and curled into fists tight enough to hurt his knuckles and dig his nails into his palm. “Of course, Naruto. Now lead the way, no reason in waiting.”

Naruto dithered at the table and stalled as he talked about his jacket and complained about Sasuke. Shino bore it with the patience characteristic of an Aburame. He was livid and no one but Kiba could probably tell. 

Eventually Kiba got tired of waiting and grabbed Naruto’s arm to drag him out of the shop and into the street. “Come on, Naruto, stop stalling.” 

Naruto pouted but began the trek through the village. Shino couldn’t even find it in himself to be surprised when they entered the Red Light District. Or when Naruto was friendly with the bouncers outside of whorehouses but got glared at by every civilian they passed and many of the shinobi. Naruto didn’t seem to notice, or was very good at pretending to not notice. 

Eventually they came to a stop outside of a dilapidated apartment building. “We can’t take the stairs,” Naruto said, “they gave out a couple years ago.” He then jumped up to the second floor roof and then disappeared through an open window. 

Shino and Kiba followed closely after. “How did you get up here when you were younger?” Kiba asked looking back at the window. 

“Hm?” Naruto was hastily throwing empty ramen cups away into the trash and nudging scattered kunai underneath his bed. “Oh, I just climbed.” 

Shino used his chakra to cover the room and he could feel the multitude of small segmented bodies moving around the tiny apartment. 

“Gah, Naruto, is something rotten in here?” Kiba asked, his face curled up in disgust and his hand covering his nose. 

“Oh, um, maybe?” Naruto hedged. 

Shino walked to the kitchen, which was just a few steps past the bed. He didn’t hesitate in ripping the cabinet doors open and taking packages of food out to put on the counter. Naruto had already cleared the small space of trash in his attempts to clean for them, so it was easy. A small plastic container held flour and there were dozens of weevils inside crawling around. He grabbed two bags of egg noodles and could feel some common grain beetles inside. A few cockroaches fell to the floor when he moved two large shrink wrapped jumbo packages of ramen cups to the counter. 

Kiba opened the fridge behind Shino and both of them gagged at the smell. Shino peeked around the edge but didn’t find much of anything in the fridge at all. A bottle of hot sauce which didn’t need to be refrigerated, a bag of microwavable rice and half a carton of orange juice. “What is that smell?” Shino asked. 

“Oh, um,” Naruto laughed uncomfortably. “Well, a couple months ago I found some chicken breasts and brought them home, but then I forgot about them and I didn’t come home for a couple days and apparently while I was gone the power had gone out again and I threw it all away, believe it, but I can’t get the smell to go away…” 

Shino did not want to know what ‘finding’ the chicken entailed. He left the kitchen behind and went to the bed. Sure enough he could both feel the movement of bedbugs and see them with bare eyesight. Flat swollen bodies and small heads perfect for biting and stealing blood. Most of them were dead but not all of them. He wandered to another corner of the apartment while Kiba talked about the fridge with Naruto. There was a hole in the ground that went straight through to the piping. Heavy cobwebs and a fat spider sat over the opening. 

The bathroom held a small colony of termites in the window sill and wall, and there was another large spider in the shower drain. There was also mold covering almost the entire ceiling and encroaching down the walls toward the floor. Shino couldn’t fix this. 

He walked back to the other boys, Kiba had moved on to throwing open the rest of the cabinets and exclaiming in horror at the type and lack of food anywhere. Naruto was standing perfectly still in the middle of the apartment and watching with blank eyes. His shoulders were curled into himself and he looked out of place. Naruto was dirty and tired looking but he shined far too bright for a place like this. 

“This is unacceptable, Naruto,” Shino said. “I cannot make this livable.” 

Naruto, for a short moment, looked like he was about to shout and throw a tantrum but instead he just nodded and said, “That’s okay.” 

“Shino!” Kiba exclaimed. “We can’t leave it like this!” 

“We can and we will.” 

“What are you talking about?! Naruto can’t--” 

“He will come with me. We have plenty of room at the compound.” 

Naruto jerked his head up from where he was inspecting his feet and stared at Shino. 

“Grab your things, Naruto.” 

“What, I can’t, you can’t--- this is--” Naruto stuttered. 

Kiba shoved his shoulder into Naruto’s and said, “Come on, Nar, Aburame’s don’t offer shit like this lightly. Don’t want to insult bug boy now, do you?” 

“What? But this is my home!” 

“If you truly wish to stay here, Naruto, I cannot force you to come with me. I can remove the bedbugs, the weevils, the grain beetles, the spiders, the cockroaches, and even your fleas. That’s not to mention the flies in your trash or the termites in your bathroom. The spiders that are in your walls or the maggot infestation I can sense in the hallway carpet outside this apartment. But I cannot guarantee they will stay away.” He knew they wouldn’t. The villagers were selling him already infested food and blankets and undoubtedly clothes. 

Naruto slumped further into himself and nodded his head. “Come on, Naruto! This place is a dump!” Kiba exclaimed. Shino glared at his teammate when Naruto just flinched. 

“I try to clean it, but it just doesn’t...get very clean,” Naruto said softly. “Even when I do take out the trash and make my bed, it doesn’t seem to matter.” 

“This isn’t your fault,” Shino said. A higher hygiene routine would undoubtedly help, but it would make only a small dent in the root of the problems. 

“Yeah, no one’s blaming you for this, Naruto,” Kiba said softer than Shino had heard him address anything or to anyone other than Hinata. “This whole building is a mess, and I’m pretty sure it’s not safe to be here at all. Does anyone else even live here?” 

Naruto shrugged. “They used to. I think they left because of me.” 

Shino doubted that. They left because the entire building was a health risk and shouldn’t still be standing. It should have been knocked down ages ago. “Do you want to stay here, Naruto?” Shino pressed. 

After a long moment, where Kiba and Akamaru breathed loudly through their mouths and Shino did another chakra sweep of the apartment, Naruto finally sighed and replied, “No.”  

“Then you will come with me.” 

Kiba instantly moved toward the only closet in the apartment. “We’ll help you grab your stuff.” He opened the closet to find nothing but a beaten up shinobi grade backpack and a torn up kunai pouch on the floor. 

Kiba paused but then grabbed the backpack and returned to the center of the room. “What do you want to bring?” Kiba asked. 

Naruto slowly moved and grabbed a couple shirts and a couple pairs of underwear from a box in the corner. He crawled under his bed and came back with an armful of dented kunai and shuriken he dumped in the backpack. Shino absently flicked a bedbug off his shoulder as he passed by him. The blond didn’t notice and continued gathering his things. A pair of chopsticks with little ramen bowls painted on them, a single blue teacup, a sleeping hat that looked like a goofy bear, a green frog wallet, and both packages of ramen. The last obviously didn’t fit in the backpack but everything else fell in with room to spare. 

“That’s… it?” Kiba asked. At Naruto’s nod he zipped up the bag and slung it over his own shoulder. He grabbed one of the boxes of ramen and quickly slipped out the window the way they came in. 

“Are you sure about this, Shino?” Naruto asked. 

“Quite,” Shino replied, following Kiba out. 

Naruto was quiet for their walk to the Aburame section of the village and grew tense the closer they got. “Uh, Shino,” Naruto prompted once the compound was in sight. “What if your parents don’t … approve of me?” 

“Don’t sweat it, kid,” Kiba said. “Shibi’s real weird but he’s nice. If he can deal with me he can deal with you.” 

“But I’m…” Naruto chewed at his lip. “No one wants me around, you know. Especially adults.” Naruto’s hand came up to hover over his stomach. 

“There’s no logical reason for them to turn you away,” Shino said. “Especially if I have brought you with me.” 

“But Shino-” 

“I would not bring you if I was not sure of this, Naruto.” 

Naruto fell silent and dragged his feet.