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Naruto’s first kiss is when she is twelve. She has just been placed on a team with the boy she hates most and can’t help but get in his face to glare at him. Suddenly, Kiba, the jerk, leans back and she gets pushed right into Uchiha Sasuke’s brooding face and their lips meet in a hard, stiff, painful way.
Both of them freeze before pulling away to cough and gag out of disgust. It’s terrible and embarrassing and Naruto has never hated Sasuke more.
The two of them glare at each other all the way to the classroom they have to wait in—and glare at each other some more. Sakura looks caught between finding it all hopelessly ridiculous and being supremely jealous.
Eventually, the glaring gets boring—particularly when they realize they might be stuck waiting for an eternity for a jounin sensei who has yet to show face. Naruto gets so bored, eventually, that she swipes the blackboard eraser and sets it up to be pinned between the door and frame as payback for having to wait for so long. Never mind that both Sakura and Sasuke admonish her and tell her that a jounin would never fall for a trick like that.
“You’re such an idiot,” Sasuke scoffs.
“Yeah, Naruto. You shouldn’t do something that’ll get us in trouble right off the bat either,” Sakura adds.
Scoffing, Naruto stands back, “Well, if he’s so great he wouldn’t be so late! He’ll just get what’s coming to him.”
“Idiot.”
“Naruto…”
Twenty minutes later, someone finally does come. They all get a good look at him. Completely covered up to the eyes and down to the fingers and toes, a tall man with hair so light the chalk dust is barely visible on him when the eraser falls on top of his crown. Even when he is finally present, he isn’t even showing his face.
“Huh,” the man says, picking up the eraser before leveling them with an utterly disinterested look in his lone dark eye. “Come with me.”
And there really isn’t much else to be said about the day.
—
Naruto’s second kiss is from an old woman who pretends and looks as though she’s much younger than she is. Tsunade is probably the worst person Naruto could think to be Hokage. She’s cowardly, plagued by vices and grief, and acts like the village means nothing to her, at first. In the end, she turns out to be reliable, exceptionally strong, and willing to bet everything on Konoha.
Naruto can’t wipe the grin from her face.
“Alright,” she cheers, jumping into the air with her fist high over her head. “Let’s get home so you can heal Sasuke and Lee and Kaka-sensei!”
“Kaka-sensei,” Tsunade asks, honey blonde brow ticking up. She tilts her head thoughtfully. “You mean Hatake Kakashi?”
“Yeah, he’s my team’s jounin sensei,” Naruto explains.
Tsunade looks over to Jiraiya with an amused expression, “Really? That scrappy little brat took on Naruto’s team?”
“Well, considering his teaching pedigree,” Jiraiya says with a small bit of boastfulness. His shoulders broaden and his chest puffs in that childish way.
“Pedi-what,” Naruto asks, feeling like she is somehow missing something.
“Nothing, kid,” Jiraiya dismisses, ruffling her hair.
Tsunade hums and looks at Naruto for a moment. Her expression almost seems as if she is studying Naruto. Her golden hair, her blue eyes, the roundness of her whiskered cheeks. In the end, she says, “I was just thinking I really might be old if Hatake-kun is already a jonin sensei.”
“But you are—mmph!”
Naruto startles when Shizune claps a hand over her mouth and laughs nervously as Tsunade develops a tick in her forehead.
“What was that,” the woman asks, ambery eyes glinting with challenge.
“Nothing, nothing,” Shizune amends quickly. “Maybe let’s head out now? We’ll be able to reach the next town by the end of the day if we leave.”
Tsunade huffs and turns on her heel to go collect her coat from the tavern while Jiraiya follows her to foot the bill. Naruto eventually breaks away from Shizune and huffs before going to pick up her hitai-ate. When she turns back around, she sees Shizune looking at her distantly.
“Hatake Kakashi is your jonin sensei, huh,” she asks, though Naruto isn’t very sure if Shizune is asking her or the world.
“Er, yeah, that’s what I said,” Naruto blinks, tying her headband behind her head. She brushes some of her bangs away from her face. “Is that weird or something?”
“No, not at all,” Shizune assures. “Actually it’s… well, never mind that.”
Naruto looks at her curiously for a moment, but it is short lived. Tsunade and Jiraiya return and they leave the town to make headway back to Konoha where Sasuke and Lee and Kakashi-sensei are waiting for them.
—
Naruto’s third kiss is from a boy who lives on a farm. She is fourteen and he is fifteen. It has been a year since Naruto left the village and while she misses home more than anything, her eyes are opened to the bright world beyond. She trains hard, Jiraiya gives up a few tricks along the way, but mostly they meet so many different people and Naruto makes friends with almost all of them.
A kind farmer has offered up his barn for lodgings until the rainstorm passes and it’s a nice break from sleeping on rocks like they have been for the past week. The farmer is funny and likes to tell stories of his neighbors. The farmer’s wife is a pretty woman who makes the best soup in the world and coos over Naruto’s long hair and offers her all the cake she could hope to eat. Together, they have a son named Seiji.
Seiji is tall, lean, and very pretty. He has short black hair and black eyes and a shy smile. He himself is shy but asks her about her travels and what it’s like to be a kunoichi and about her friends back home. They talk and talk and talk while the adults discuss things like the harvest and the political climate of the area. For three days, Naruto spends all her time in a little room with Seiji as they talk about everything they want in life.
Naruto tells him about her dream to be Hokage so she can be acknowledged by the whole village, be something more than the annoyance they think her to be. Seiji wants to take over the farm and continue living his simple life—he loves the peace of the rice paddies and likes hearing the hollering chickens when he chases them back into their pen. It’s so different, but Naruto likes talking to Seiji—likes Seiji, and he seems to like her too.
On their third and final night, Seiji and Naruto are sitting together in his room trading stories again. They’re pressed together from arm to hip with a shared blanket wrapped around their shoulders. Some of her hair spills into his lap and he plays with it idly as she tells him about the time she and Sakura had tried to peek into the boy’s side of the onsen to catch a glimpse of Kakashi-sensei’s face. Only, in the end she accidentally sent the wall crashing down because the divider was not meant to hold the weight of two dozen clones and Naruto ended up with a shiner from Sakura and spent the rest of the night rebuilding the wall. Seiji laughs at her story and then a lull tugs at their conversation.
“The rain should be over by tomorrow,” Seiji comments, looking at the clearing night. He sounds hesitant.
“Yeah, it was over sooner than I thought it’d be,” Naruto hums.
He looks at her a little sadly, “You guys will probably leave tomorrow then.”
“Yeah,” she nods, feeling sad too. She has never liked saying goodbye.
“I kinda don’t want you to go,” Seiji murmurs, seeming like he is in the same boat.
She looks up at him, not quite sure what to say. She likes Seiji and she hates it when people she likes are sad. Naruto licks her lips and twirls the end of a golden pigtail in her lap. “Ah… well, I’ll come back to visit you someday, believe it!”
She gives him her best grin and for a moment he appears dazzled. And then he saddens again.
“I know, but that might not be for a long time,” Seiji says, looking at her in a way that Naruto has never been looked upon before. She stills, unsure with growing nerves. In his eyes, she can see herself but as something closer to a woman.
“Seiji?”
“Can…” He flushes and looks away, debating for a moment. In the end, he whispers, “Can I kiss you, Naruto?”
Naruto blushes too and clenches her fists in her lap, “I… Uhm… Sure.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I want you to kiss me,” she admits, grinning sheepishly.
Seiji laughs and she laughs too. He then reaches up to hold her cheeks tenderly, thumbs swiping over the marks. “These… They make you look like a fox.”
He doesn’t know the half of it, she thinks, staring into his dark eyes. He smiles again before leaning forward and pressing his lips softly to her own. He lingers before pulling away and rubbing the back of his neck as he blushes.
“Uh… thanks.”
“You’re welcome?”
They look at each other and laugh again. The rest of the night is spent trading kisses as Naruto tells him all about the time she and Sasuke and Sakura and Kakashi-sensei rescued a princess in a land filled with snow.
In the morning, Jiraiya and Naruto say their farewells. She will not see Seiji for many years.
—
Naruto’s fourth kiss is with a boy from a temple who has a fraction of the Kyuubi sealed within him.
Sora is a brat and a jerk who walks around arrogantly and is so, so angry. He’s mean and terrible and makes fun of her and challenges her just as much. He looks down on her despite how utterly similar they are. He reminds her of the worst parts of herself and the worst parts of Sasuke. Because of this, however, Naruto sees under all his anger and pain into the vulnerable part of him that just wants to be accepted and just wants to be seen. So she sets aside her reservations and allows him to train with her.
They’re training well into the night, sparring. For a week they exist like this, in tandem as something crackles between them. It comes to a head under a waning moon when suddenly something changes in the way he comes at her. He backs her up into a tree and holds her there. Naruto stares at him dubiously as she threatens him with a kunai against his femoral artery. It’s a draw.
“I win,” he tells her, knife against her chest.
“Like hell,” she scoffs, pressing her kunai into his thigh just slightly, to let him know it’s there.
He barely flinches, eyes shrouded with something as he stares down at her. His breath is hot against her face and her own chest moves against his as she pants. Sora wrinkles his nose as if he can’t stand the way she smells. He drops his knife but doesn’t let go of her left wrist which he holds high above her head. Naruto doesn’t drop her kunai.
“Are we gonna go again,” she asks, cocking her head to the side. “Or are you tired?”
He doesn’t say anything and she begins to frown.
“Sora,” she starts, but nothing else is able to leave her mouth.
Suddenly, he’s grabbing her and kissing her. Naruto is left shocked. Sora even kisses like he’s angry.
He pulls her hair and forces her head back as he moves his lips against hers. When she lets him lick into her mouth, he bites it before doing something that makes her whimper and lean heavier against the tree. He knocks the knife out of her hand and snatches her right wrists too tightly and it’s painful, all things considered. He pushes her arms up so that she is prone and he kisses and kisses and kisses her.
When he finally pulls away, Naruto breathlessly accuses, “You’re supposed to be a monk.”
“Not yet,” he shrugs and kisses her again.
They kiss for hours. Long enough that Naruto’s jaw hurts and she comes away with dark bruises on her neck and chest because Sora had pressed her to the ground, unzipped her jacket, and shoved her mesh undershirt to her armpits sometime in between. It’s hotter and steamier than anything she has ever done because Sora’s anger soon turns to passion. In the end, they’re left heaving and breathing the same air as they calm down.
He looms over her, taking in her ruined appearance, snickers at her and leaves just like that.
“What—” she starts, but he’s already gone.
Naruto is left to fix her clothes and hurry home before the sun comes up. When she catches sight of herself in the mirror, she can only flush and hope that it will all be gone in the morning. It mostly is when she wakes a couple hours later and what isn’t gone can easily be covered by her jacket. She sees Sora off, gives him an offensive gesture before hugging him and makes him promise to come by soon so they can duke it out on proper terms. Naruto has never been too good at goodbyes, but something about this doesn’t hurt like it usually does.
She sighs to herself, content.
“New friend,” someone asks from beside her.
Naruto jolts and looks up to see Kakashi standing beside her, eyeing the boy leaving on the dirt path. She is about to ask when he returned only to falter when his eye seems to travel down to her neck. Swiftly, she reaches up to tug at her collar and looks away with a flush.
“Er… something like that…” she mumbles, pulling a twin-tail over her shoulder to better hide her neck.
His brow slants a bit before he knocks her on the head with the spine of his book. She squawks but Kakashi has already begun to walk away. He calls over his shoulder, “I heard from Asuma that you were practicing hard. Why don’t you show me what you learned?”
“A-Alright,” she says, a bit dazed as she scrambles after his long strides.
Strangely, she gets the feeling that he’s in a bad mood when he pushes her that much harder in training.
—
The fifth time Naruto kisses a boy, she is again kissing Uchiha Sasuke.
So much has happened between them. They’ve fought each other, they’ve fought together, they’ve run from and chased one another, they’ve torn each other apart, they’ve put each other back together, they’ve saved the fucking world together—and all Sasuke can think to do is leave, leave, leave like it’s all he knows how to do.
It’s the middle of the night when Sasuke comes to her. He’s tall and slanting and dark from head to toe. He stands in her genkan, staring her dead in the eye, and then his hand—his lone hand—reaches out to smooth over her cheek. Naruto stills where she is standing on the ledge, eyes wide as she leans chest first toward Sasuke—like her heart can’t help but try to reach him. He takes a small step forward.
“Naruto,” he murmurs. His voice is deep and sad. He looks down at her with a furrow in his brows. Sasuke looks at her like she is his entire world, like he is holding something in his hand—something precious that he shouldn’t have. He brushes his thumb over the ridge of her cheekbone. Solemnly, he repeats, “Naruto…”
And he leans down to slant his mouth over her own. It’s a kiss full of sadness.
His lips aren’t hesitant, neither are they passionate. It feels almost as if he is just trying to savor the feeling of her against him. Sasuke’s lips are cold and dry and hers are wet with her nervous licking. His head is tilted and his touch, for once, is so gentle that it nearly breaks Naruto’s heart. It’s as if he’s afraid to break her—as if he hasn’t already torn her arm off and ripped her heart out.
They stay like that for a minute before Sasuke leans back, standing once again tall and dark and lonely.
She grasps his hand and nuzzles into it as tears build behind her eyes. Quietly, she murmurs, “You can stay, y’know…”
“I have to go,” he tells her, fingers brushing some of her hair behind her ear.
“You really don’t,” she tries to tell him. But he’s already pulled away. Naruto watches as he steps back and fades away. And Sasuke leaves as he always does.
Sasuke will depart tomorrow morning and she won’t see him off, it’s too painful. Neither of them know when they will see one another next. Whenever he returns, Naruto will welcome him. Now, she can only stare at his lonely, slanting back and hold in tears.
For the hundred thousandth time, Uchiha Sasuke breaks her heart.
When her door shuts with a soft click, Naruto presses the back of her hand to her trembling mouth as hot tears fall down her cheeks. She gasps quietly and reaches out, splaying her palm over the plaster wall and dragging it down as she falls to her knees. There in the dark of her empty home void of soul, she weeps.
She stays there for what must be hours, curled up into a ball of pain as she mourns someone who isn’t even dead. Naruto mourns what could have been, what should have been. She mourns this sad and lonely boy who owns her heart and dooms her soul lifetime after lifetime to pain and suffering. It isn’t fair, she thinks, it just isn’t fair. Not when she and Sasuke are meant to be one.
For Naruto knows in the core of her heart that she and Sasuke are meant for one another. They are soulmates. In every lifetime they have lived, they have met and vied for one another. But just as in every life, they are destined to be apart. It isn’t time for them yet. Death won’t stop them and one day in some far off time, they will be together. She just knows. However many more cycles of samsara it will take, when the universe is done weighing Sasuke’s karma against him, she is certain one day they will meet each other as lovers. But it still hurts.
Naruto weeps and weeps like the broken, heartsick girl she is. Sick with love and grief and tired from carrying all the hate and fate of the world on her little shoulders.
One day, a deep and resonant voice says from within the core of her mind.
She looks up at the nine-tailed fox cursed to remain with her until she dies. Pitifully, Naruto replies, But I love him now.
And she is only met with silence. Not even a being as ancient and wise as a god can help her in this.
Her mind is silent for the rest of the night. Eventually, she curls up right there on the floor and cries until she falls asleep.
Come morning, Naruto wakes up to rapping on her door. It’s firm and persistent and she reaches out with her chakra as she picks her aching body up from the hardwood. The chakra on the other side of the threshold is electric and familiar.
Her eyes slide to a clock on the wall. It’s late, almost midday, so she quickly hauls herself out of her wallowing and hurries over to greet her teacher.
“Naruto,” Kakashi says, lowering his hand when she pulls open the door to face him. He blinks at her appearance. Naruto knows she must seem like an utter mess.
She swallows and hoarsely asks a question she knows the answer to.
“He left?”
“At dawn,” Kakashi hums, fixing his mask a bit.
Naruto nods. They stand before one another for a silent while before Naruto clears her throat and tries to put on a casual front.
“How is Sakura-chan? You saw him off together, right,” she questions. That had been part of the reason why she hadn’t gone as well. She and Sakura had turned into inadvertent rivals over the years for Sasuke’s affection. It is unspoken, but they both knew there was no winner in the situation. Naruto has never actively tried to step on Sakura’s toes or intercept her attempts, but things don’t work out that easily and sometimes things become sore and awkward between them. She knows it is best to have skipped out on it.
Kakashi nods widely.
“She’s sad, but she’ll get better,” he tells her honestly. In the middle of it all happens to be him, their teacher and the leader of their genin team. Over the years, he has sat through all of the fighting and heartache between their tragic group, consoling each of them one by one. Somehow, he always manages to find Naruto last. As a kid she had been hurt by this, but as a near adult she is beginning to see it for the truth of the situation. He saves her for last because he wants to give her the most time.
“How are you,” he asks gently.
She bites her lip to lessen the sting of her broken heart but it throbs all the same. Naruto hangs her head and grips the handle of her door. When she doesn’t respond to him, he tips his head.
“Can I come in?”
She sniffles and nods, moving to the side so he can step into her apartment. Once the door is closed, she turns and presses her face into his chest. She begins to sob and crumples like a child under the weight of all her sadness. He catches her easily, letting her lean heavily into his front.
“It hurts so much,” she cries, gasping and heaving as more tears spring forth.
“I know,” he murmurs, carefully drawing her closer. He picks her up and moves through her apartment with practiced ease. Neither of them can count how many times he’s brought her back to her apartment after she’s passed out during training or been too broken to move after a mission. He steps over her houseplants and the rubbish she hasn’t managed to take out before settling on her couch. There, he allows her to hide away from all the world within his arms.
“I love him,” she heaves, so fiercely she is almost sick. Naruto claws into his uniform vest and whimpers. “He loves me, so why is it that he always has to leave?”
“That’s just how he is,” Kakashi tells her, stroking her hair comfortingly. “He’ll come when he is needed now, but for the time being he has things to find out about the world and about himself.”
“I wish it wasn’t like this,” she shudders. The tears won’t stop and she can’t seem to breathe. “I wish he’d just stay. I wish he’d just let me love him. Why is he like this? Why does he have to be this way?”
“You can’t change him.”
“I know, but why does loving someone always have to hurt so bad,” she asks.
He is silent for a long moment and she thinks he is just letting her cry and babble like she’s a kid all over again. He continues to pet her hair and rub her back while she empties out her heart onto his chest. Sometimes it is like this, he is smart but can’t help faltering when someone shows too much emotion in front of him. But he surprises her by speaking as he draws her closer.
“It isn’t always like that. Sometimes, you just end up loving someone who hurts you. It’s harder for you than most, I know. You have such a big heart and so much love to give. I admire that about you.”
She sniffs, “I just get hurt in the end though. I always do… because it’s always him…”
“I know,” Kakashi murmurs, curling around her slightly, as if he wants to enclose around her like a protective shell. “But you’re always stronger in the end.”
“I just wish it wasn’t like this,” she repeats. “I wish he could just let himself love me back…”
“He does love you, more than anything. But it’s just not meant to be right now.”
Hearing this painful, scalding truth, Naruto can only sob harder and burrow herself closer to his side. Kakashi holds her the whole long while.
“I wish it were someone like you instead,” she sniffs, twisting her single hand into his shirt. “Someone who’s always there.”
It is only hearing this which prompts him to still. His hand hovers over her shoulder for such a long moment that she looks up at him through spindly wet lashes. He looks at her with a gaze charcoal grey in color and utterly unreadable. In the end he leans back so she can’t see him properly and goes back to holding her against his side.
—
The sixth time Naruto kisses a boy and every time she kisses one after is with a man bearing the title of Sixth Hokage.
It’s early in the morning. Naruto sits with Kakashi in his office with plans for genin team assignments laid out over the desk. They have stayed up all night, talking about possibilities and the future. Naruto has pulled a chair beside his own and they’ve spent the past two hours leaning so closely to him that their knees touch and their shoulders brush with every breath.
Kakashi’s arm has moved around her at some point, his fingers idly running up and down the groove of her spine as he speaks to her quietly.
“I wasn’t prepared at all when I took on my first team,” he says. “They weren’t ready, but I wasn’t ready either. The thing is, Naruto-chan, you’re never really going to be ready.”
“I know,” she murmurs, looking down at the pictures of the three academy students about to be assigned to her. They look so young and yet she can remember being their age so vividly. It feels like a eon ago. “But—”
“I believe in you,” Kakashi says, eyes smiling and crinkling at the corners. “Whatever you decide, I’ll believe in you.”
She stares at him widely, awed. She wonders, idly, how it is possible for someone to be able to see her so completely. For someone to have seen the worst of her, the ugliest of her, the stupidest of her, and still look at her like she is the most brilliant thing in the world.
Naruto feels her center of gravity shift and she leans heavily forward. Kakashi reaches out to steady her. Throughout it all, hasn’t it always been him ready to catch her falls?
“Kakashi,” she murmurs. “Do you love me?”
He blinks, looking like he hadn’t quite expected that. Kakashi is silent for a moment before he hums, “Who doesn’t love you?”
Naruto leans further and his hand remains steady, holding her up. “You’ll never leave, right?”
“I’ll be here as long as you need me,” he says.
“For the rest of my life,” Naruto asks.
Kakashi tilts his head with a hum, “That’s a long time for an old man like me… But I’ll do my best. I owe you everything, Naruto.”
She reaches up to hold his cheeks and he goes still. His expression diminishes from playful to something unreadable, but the adoration in his eyes does not fade.
Slowly, Naruto curls her fingers into his mask. She’s seen his face before, just once and she had never told anyone. With as much care as she can exude, she pulls it down to reveal his beautiful face. Her eyes fall to his pale lips before she glances back up, asking silently.
Kakashi responds by threading his fingers into her golden hair and tilting her head up so he can press his mouth to hers.
Kakashi kisses her like a man should a woman. Hard and firm yet full of tender gratefulness. He kisses Naruto like he loves her and it is enough for her heart to soar. She leans into him and one hand winds around her waist, pulling her closer, while the other holds her cheek so, so gently.
When they part, he looks at her adoringly and she feels so loved.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he says, yet he doesn’t pull away. “Your father wouldn’t be happy…”
Her father is twenty years dead, she wants to say, though that would only make him feel worse.
“But I’m happy, that’s all that matters,” she says instead, leaning into him because she knows he can bear her weight without collapsing. Can bear her without faltering. She thinks it would have been so much easier if it had been him from the start…
“I love you,” she tells him.
“It’s terribly easy for anyone to be loved by you,” he teases, twirling a golden strand near her cheek round his pointer finger.
Kakashi knows what she feels for Sasuke and is content with it. He knows that whatever it is between them is perhaps small in comparison, but it is no less precious. Finally, there is a man who believes in her no matter what, won’t try to ruin her, won’t leave and he is all for her. Perhaps they are not star crossed in every life, but in this one they have each other and Naruto could want nothing more.
“But I’m choosing you,” she says. “What more is there to it?”
“Not much, I guess,” he laughs and he kisses her again and again and again.