Miles to Go Before I Sleep

[permetaform]

Miles to Go Before I Sleep

.o0o.

AN: KakaNaruKaka. Naruto's 10~26ish over the course of this, pretty much gen. Thanks to smiley95 for the prompt! Sorta spoilers for a bit of the Pein arc. Credit to Robert Frost for title inspiration.

.o0o.

It's the fall festival and finally Naruto had a yukata so he could attend! He'd never had the money to buy one before, and the shopkeepers didn't want to rent one to him. But Jiji gave this nice one to him, a happy burnt-orange color with a pattern of yellow leaves, and told him to try to keep it clean, but not very seriously. Naruto just made a face at the old man, because the shopkeepers didn't think he could keep theirs clean either!, and promised that he would.

The festival was fantastic, like the streets dressed themselves up in fancy outfits too, and the air was full of the smells of food and laughter and the sun was bright.

And the earth was dusty.

Naruto coughs and picks himself up. He didn't see who pushed him, and he's not surprised that someone did, only. Only it's festival...

And he doesn't know why he hopes otherwise. Thankfully it's only dirt, and easy to dust off.

It's annoying getting dust in your eyes though.

He makes his way more carefully though the throng, and nobody looks at him and nobody throws things at him or hits him or kicks him, but it feels like they did. 'Cause they weren't moving around him like they moved around other people and other kids, didn't stop to say hello or perhaps to just smile. Their eyes slid off Jiji's gift and slid off his face like he wasn't even there, and he knew all those things the girls yelled at him at the Academy for, to 'dress nicer', were lies.

The blond wobbles as yet another person shoves past him like he didn't exist and he watches almost numbly as the drink in their hands tip towards him.

And then he is scooped away.

"Maa, what's this?" a voice asks playfully.

Naruto blinks open his eyes and realizes that they're on a roof, the festival like a heaving sea of color below them. He looks up and sees what must be a shinobi in a simple dark blue yukata, and the silver-haired man must be a shinobi because they're on a roof and he masks his face like he's seen some of the nin do, though none of the civilians. (Even though it's kinda strange that they guy covered so much of his face, only a bit of skin around his right eye was showing, the rest was behind a mask or the strap of black cloth covering his other one.)

"A mute?" the man pokes at his cheek, then brushes a knuckle almost carelessly at the damp corner of Naruto's eye.

"Gah! Quit it!" Naruto slaps at the hand and swipes at his cheek with the heel of his hand. He adds, defensively, "A lot of dirt was being kicked up."

"Aa," the shinobi agrees, not looking at him. "The drumming's about to start, would you like me to set you back down?"

But they could see the stage that had been in the square from here, probably hear it pretty well too, so Naruto's not really sure why the guy's asking. "Nah, it's nice up here." He starts, with a thought, and peers at the shinobi cautiously, "Unless you, you want me to leave. I can do it on my own, easy, I've been practicing."

The blond sighs and walks towards the drainage pipe that he can hold onto, to slide down from the roof, but finds himself once again lifted and swung about. He's settled into a warm lap and Naruto tilts his head up to see that one eye smiling at him. "Who says you have to leave?"

Naruto opens his mouth to reply but the words get stuck in his throat. The truth makes him squirm, and he doesn't want to lie to the nice man.

The dark grey eye watching him becomes a little sadder as it sees his hands make fists, and the blond finds one of his hands snatched up and the fingers gently pried open.

A masked kiss falls into his palm.

"You don't have to go unless you want to."

"Oh... okay," Naruto whispers.

And they watch the drums and the dancing and the colorful festival goers as the night falls and they eat the bento that the grey-haired man pulls out from somewhere and when they part Naruto forgot to ask for his name, but he does ask, "Will I see you again?"

"Mmm," the shinobi looks at him, eye dull and faraway, "Perhaps. Maybe in a year."

He leaves Naruto with a cloth-covered kiss on his cheek and a swirl of air.

.o0o.

The next year Naruto's yukata is a bit shorter, but not by much, and it's easy for Ayame to let out the seams. He finds himself at one point swept up to a rooftop, but he isn't so surprised this time.

When he asks, "Will I see you again?"

The man answers, "Possibly. In a year." And leaves Naruto with a kiss on the other cheek and regretting that he still forgets to ask the guy his name.

.o0o.

"What's your name?"

"Mou, you're training to become a shinobi, ne? I hear you're graduating in a couple months."

The guy's doing this on purpose or something, Naruto thinks in disbelief.

"Ninja have to gather intel, you should get on that," and he leaves Naruto with a kiss on the forehead.

.o0o.

"From what I'd found out about you, I'd thought you'd been able to dodge the eraser," Naruto asks the next year, pointedly. He's wearing a new yukata, it was plain but it fit, and he'd bought it himself.

Kakashi takes a moment to stare blankly at him, then faint recognition flickers through his eye as he understands the question. He lifts his shoulder in the smallest shrug, "I was trying to teach myself to not avoid things."

Which is no answer at all, pretty much like the cloth-covered kiss that he left, that almost touches Naruto's mouth, but not quite.

And he avoids Naruto's eyes the entire time.

.o0o.

Jiraiya's...off. Somewhere. In the booths with the red lanterns and the high pitched giggles. Naruto rolls his eyes and strolls by himself in the streets. It's different here, the autumn festival's different here, lighter somehow. People are celebrating a harvest, and only a harvest. No one is silently celebrating a victory and mourning a defeat, and feeling conflicted about who, actually, won. No one is pretending not to know it was his birthday.

Naruto smiles and refuses to let it trickle off, and he immerses himself in the lightheartedness. He tells himself he's not waiting for anything, or anyone; he is not in Konoha.

There is a gathering in the village square of dragon costume dancers and fire throwing and music and Naruto tries to squeeze closer. There's not much room though, the entire area was pretty packed. Instinctively Naruto looks up, for a place a shinobi could get to easily but would stump a civilian and finds himself looking at a sliver of face and an eye upturned in a smile.

It takes half a second to hop to that roof. It takes longer for Naruto to get his mouth working. Sorta.

"Eeeeh?"

"I was passing through." Kakashi says helpfully.

Naruto looks around him. It still does not look like Konoha. He turns to the guy in disbelief.

Kakashi hums and looks at the heaving village square idly. Naruto looks at him for a bit, opening his mouth, then shuts it and looks too, to see if something was important there.

They quietly watch the dragon dancers, their shoulders touching, the posing monster and the mock battles and the fake deaths.

"I don't like the fall." Kakashi suddenly says.

Naruto starts to feel all squirmy in his stomach and was opening his mouth to apologize but the silver-haired man cuts him off.

"Things...happen. In the fall. And I'm the only one who's left to remember them," he says, as if it's supposed to make sense, "And they never seemed to stop happening. And then. You happened."

There was a wealth of meaning in those last two words, in the way Kakashi's eye flickers towards his stomach, in the anguish and memories passing behind that look, in the way that he reaches over and pulls Naruto into his arms and leans his chin on Naruto's head, and then relaxes. Completely.

And Naruto feels like he's missing a lot of things that Kakashi's trying and failing to say out loud, but what he knows is enough. He knows that the silver-haired man didn't think it was his fault, and didn't want to let him go.

He likes that he wasn't being let go, yet.

He knows it will last only as long as the festival lasts. (He's left with a kiss buried into his hair.)

.o0o.

"Yo."

"Hey. You made it."

"...Konoha was quiet."

Naruto blinks. He's not sure how they went from hello's to a comment on Konoha's noise level, but he'll go with it. "Well it's not quiet here, is it?" He waves at the large bustling port town; their harvest festival smells of fish, but it's the biggest he'd ever seen.

"No, it's not quiet here," Kakashi agrees. He runs his hand through Naruto's hair and Naruto leans into it briefly, then shakes him off to pull his arms toward the dango stand.

"You have to try these! And I don't even like dango, usually! We should get a few sticks before the performances start!"

"Okay."

His cheek is sticky at the end of the night and he's busy making a face and trying to rub at it when he realizes that Kakashi had to have taken off his mask, for it to be sticky. And then he slaps his own forehead for not looking when the mask was down.

.o0o.

Despite, or because, of the big hole in the middle of Konoha, the harvest festival roars, almost feverish. People celebrate loud, and very drunk, and he keeps getting slaps on his back and greetings. It's probably the oddest thing ever, and Naruto doesn't feel like he's at a festival in Konoha.

He hides himself eventually in the shadows of several overhanging eaves, with a good view of the main festival street; the square where the festivities were usually held is still only a crater.

He finds himself with company, after only a couple minutes.

"You... didn't come last year," Naruto asks, quietly.

Kakashi sits next to him, not too close, "I didn't think that you'd want to see me."

Naruto squawks and shoves himself into the guy's face, "The hell made you think that?"

Arms slowly rises up around him, questioningly, and he sinks into the man's lap with a sigh. "The way you reacted when I said I liked you," Kakashi admits.

He tenses. The arms tensed around him too.

"That wasn't," Naruto has to push the words out, "The first time anyone has ever said that to me."

Kakashi peers at him in question.

"They usually laughed, after."

Cloth covered kisses drops on his eyes, and held there, and when the silver-haired nin raises his face there's wet spots on his mask. Naruto coughs, and twists to watch the street.

"Also, um, it's kinda different, isn't it 'sensei', when it's not festival?" he adds pointedly.

"Aa." Kakashi agrees. They spend the rest of it companionably, like there'd never been a break.

Naruto closes his eyes when the moon's edging in, and the Copy Nin's about to go, and he feels the uncovered kiss land just under his jaw. He darts his hands up and holds Kakashi's head in place, before he could withdraw.

"Leave a mark," he demands.

He hums a question against Naruto's skin, and the blond shivers.

"If you meant what you'd said, if you like me for more than just one day, give me something I can look at tomorrow."

For a long, long time there was nothing, and he thinks he will be refused, but then the lips move and there was a tingling suction, hard, and the feel of teeth, like a promise.

.o0o.

It was a long journey, he thinks, even though they'd met when he was ten. It took the passing years, and questions that grew and changed; as 'the grey-haired man' became 'Kakashi', and the kisses became uncovered and slouched their lazy way towards his lips.

"Hokage-sama."

"Eeeh?" Blue eyes peers over a richly-robed shoulder, the folds of the cloth puddling carelessly around them.

"I think your ANBU are scaring the shop owners," that one eye's smiling.

"Tch. You're the one that chose this roof," the blond-haired man snorts, fond.

"Aa." The nin tugs his Hokage even more snugly into his lap. "I suppose I did."

The leader of the village laughs and settles back into his shinobi's arms, satisfied. They watch the fireworks splash across the night sky.

There are plans to return to their bedroom after the last bit of ash falls; he'd finally gotten the slippery man to move in.

.o0o.

end.

.o0o.

AN: ::wiggles happily:: =D

Also, dunno how obvious it was, but Kakashi was the foxwife this turn.

If you have a request for a KakaNaru one-shot either in this universe or in another, give me a prompt/idea and I'll see what I can do with it. I'll credit you with the concept if I end up posting it.