19Hot Pursuit
"You've got a stalker."
Naruto choked on his yawn, stumbling mid-step. He threw Kakashi and incredulous look. "What? Again? Is it Hinata?"
Kakashi shrugged, flipping though his infernal book. "No," he said simply.
Then who? Little Hinata kept following him ever since last year and it was pretty weird when she found her way onto the compound. Naruto knew better than to glance over his shoulder. If not Hinata the who would follow him around? Did his mother set him up again? "Someone I know?" he asked his team mate.
Kakashi shrugged. "Maybe."
They turned a corner and Naruto caught a glance of something red in the corner of his eye. "What? Who?"
Kakashi closed is book with a loud snap and sighed. "Right so, 5'8'' a bit petite, red hair, brown eyes and a tongue so sharp it could shave you clean."
Naruto blinked. He knew someone like that? As a matter of fact, the only redhead he knew of was his mother, and she was most definitely not 5'8'' and his father would take offence to the word "petite".
"So uh, who?" he asked, nodding in greeting to a few guards they passed on their way to the tower.
Kakashi seemed annoyed by now. "Why don't you just turn around and talk to her? She isn't exactly hiding. She's tailing you."
"But who!?" Naruto whined. "Are you sure it isn't Hinata in a henge?"
Apparently insulted by the suggestion he couldn't see through a simple henge, Kakashi glowered at him. "Did you seriously forget the mission we had yesterday? And besides, Hinata is seven, Uzumaki. I know the difference between a child and a woman."
"From your books, you mean," Naruto joked (tough not really, who even gave him these books?). Antisocial as the brat was, Naruto knew that he didn't talk to anyone aside from him and his family.
Kakashi glowered at him and sped up a little. Naruto laughed at his retreating back and was about to catch up when someone tapped him on the shoulder. Who would-?
"Hey," his stalker (redhead, brown eyes, smirking, woman) greeted with a cocky smirk. "I'm Tayuya and we are going on a date, lover boy."
Uh... they were what now? She grabbed his collar before he could protest and dragged him away, towards the market. He stumbled after her for a few steps before catching up with himself.
"Whoa, hold up!" he huffed, trying to pry her hand from his collar. Her grip was surprisingly strong and her skin terribly soft in contrast. "We are what now?!"
She stopped abruptly, spinning to face him and closed what little distance there was between them to press herself up against him. Was breathing important? Were the people staring? Did he care? Probably not. And when her finger drifted along his jaw and she smiled sultrily at him, he forgot why he had ever thought about protesting.
"We," she breathed with a cocky grin, "are going on a date. Got that, lover boy?"
"Uhu," he breathed in agreement, swallowing hard. Wow. Who was that again? And why hadn't he met her before?
"Good boy," she praised and flicked his nose. "Come on, we are going to have some ramen."
Shit.
He was in love.
She was a sassy woman, this Tayuya. Naruto dimly remembered that he, Kakashi and Itachi had indeed rescued (which was not actually true) her from one of Orochimaru's hideouts. Again, rescue was, uh, very very subjective. How did he had already freed her himself? How did he forget that sway in her hips? The gleam in her eyes? The way she demolished a big part of the facilities with a vengeance?
And she ate ramen with just as little restraint as he did.
Where was this woman when his mother had tried to set him up with Anko? Ah, right. In that creepy hideout.
"Your whiskers," she began after her seventh bowl (his respect for her shot through the roof, as did Teuchi's from the awed look on his face), "are they birthmarks? Scars? A fashion statement?"
"Birthmarks," he responded automatically before blinking. What? "A fashion statement?" he asked her.
She shrugged. "Oh lover boy, you wouldn't believed how many crazy fucks I've met that bleached their own ass just to feel better about their shitty existences." Her eyes sparkled as she smiled at him. "Or did you think that the snake pedo was naturally this pale?"
"Never thought about it," he replied. "Thought he was just weird that way."
She snorted, finishing her bowl. Wait. Did she already have more than him? "The bastard's weird alright, cut around me often enough, he did." And like no one else was there, she swiveled in her seat and pulled her shirt up.
He noticed two things. No, three. Three tings. Two of them were her perky, pale breasts that jiggled ever so slightly when the fabric of her shirt passed. The second was the myriad of scars that adorned her abdomen. He wasn't sure where to look. The terrible scars or the wonderful breasts. In the end, the decisions was easy.
Damn.
That was so hot.
Suddenly she pulled the shirt down again, after what couldn't have been no more than five seconds, and smirked at him. "See?"
He swallowed, hooking a finger in the collar of his shirt, pulling nervously on it. "I... saw, yes."
"Liked em?" she purred, leaning forward.
Why was it so hot here? It was September, dammit! "Oh, uh, yeah. Really did."
Her eyebrows rose but her smirk widened even more. "Really did, huh? Into scars, are we?" She grinned toothily at him when he sputtered some sort of response. "But that's not a problem. Got a lot of those for you, too." She pulled on her own shirt collar, down far enough to reveal her collarbone, delicate as it was, with a faint scar crossing right across it. She pulled a little more, displaying some more cleavage.
Was there a correct response to this? Well, aside from drooling? And staring? ... And popping a less than appropriate boner?
Well, kissing her seemed like a good idea at the time so... yeah.
She tasted like ramen. Could this get any better?
Somehow, Tayuya was a ninja. Well, not somehow, just coincidentally a ninja of just the right caliber to fill in on his team since Itachi got married. At least, that's what his father said.
"She's perfect," his mother insisted, dropping a stack of at least a thousand pages right on front of Minato's twitching face. Yeah, that was one huge turn off for becoming Hokage.
"How is she perfect?" he dared to ask, slouching in his chair while Kakashi kept giggling and reading in the background.
"She said my tits are awesome."
Naruto fell out of his chair. "W-What? What the fu-"
"Language!" his mother interrupted serenely.
"-uuu... eh. I mean... What the hell?"
His father, behind the towering stack of papers, peered curiously at his wife. "Yes. Tell us more." There was a gleam in his eyes, one he had most certainly inherited from Jiraiya. God damn perverts.
And he was one of them.
His mother didn't care for the realization that simply must have shown on his face and continued on, pulling stacks of paper from seemingly thin air and piling them on the desk. "So I met her yesterday," she said pleasantly, though her eyes bore right into Naruto's very soul. Oh shit! What did she tell her? That he ate her face because she showed him her tits? Gods, he was a fucking perv! "She told me you had my face! Knew from a single glance!" More like because she was freakin' stalking him, but yeah, who was he to talk these days... "Said she could see where you got the looks from!" She turned, most likely to wink smugly at his father.
"Yes, yes," Minato interrupted. "But how does that lead to your breasts?"
Naruto groaned. "Can I go now? I don't need to hear this!"
His mother turned to him with a huge smile. "Sure honey, you go on. She's waiting outside anyways."
Of course she was. Not that he was about to complain.
He pushed Kakashi out of the door as he heard his father speak up. "Now... I think we've got some time on our hands..." Never had he exited the tower faster before.
He ran into little Hinata later that day. She had taken to stalking him for the sole purpose of glaring at Tayuya. Seeing someone as cute and small as Hinata glare death at someone was as amusing as it was scary. The fact that she could activate her Byakugan by now just made it more unnerving. Maybe he shouldn't have visited her as often as he had...
"So you've got a stalker, huh?"
He snorted in amusement. "Are you talking about yourself?"
Tayuya elbowed him, though she grinned widely at him. "Nah, I'm your girl now. Ain't no stalking, accompanying. From a distance, at times."
His girl? "Say...," he began, scratching his cheek. "I did wonder why you just... came after me like that."
"What? Not enough skin on display for you, lover boy?" she teased, pulling at the hem of her shirt, just enough to reveal her toned stomach to him. He resented that he he licked his lips. She laughed, bumping into him as they walked towards the village gates. "Oh I am your girl because I wanna have your babies."
He tripped over literally nothing and did nothing to stop himself from falling aside from an unintelligent, "Hurgh?" before he ate dirt.
She snorted from above him. "Your grace certainly didn't draw me, lover boy." She walked ahead with a devilish sway to her hips, waving over her shoulder. "Hurry up, we gonna be late."
"Hurgh!?"
Well, he was still somewhat baffled, after all. He kept laying there, in the middle of the street, until Hinata tried to pull him up again. He ran even later than Kakashi that day.
Somehow they were a good team. Maybe because she didn't complain about any of his order - unlike some Hatake brat - or maybe because she simply did fit well with the two of them. Because it certainly didn't have anything to do with the fact that he shared a tent with her. No. Who would get those ideas? He certainly didn't.
Mainly because he couldn't sleep with her ass pressed against his crotch.
Blissful torture, that's what it was.
How was she fine with all that?
On their first mission she had sadly forgotten her tent - he didn't believe that for one second - and because he didn't trust Kakashi with anything that had two legs and appeared even remotely female - he let her sleep in his own tent. There would have been enough space, after all. Or so he thought. Space or no, Tayuya seemed insistent on creeping into his sleeping bag the moment he had laid down.
"Uh... why are you-?"
"ShutupGonnasleep. Nighty..."
Her sleepy lull was horrifyingly cute, so he couldn't bring himself to say something. After that, he couldn't bring himself to so much as twitch because sage above why was this happening!
Second time hadn't been much better, but not any worse. Though this time she slept while hugging him like any over-sized teddy, tangling her legs with his. That time he did actually fall asleep because the mission had been more exhausting than he thought (and because he didn't sleep at all the night before). However, he woke up to Tayuya draped all across him, his hands on her ass.
They stayed there, even after he became aware of it, because... well... yeah. He squeezed. It was heavenly, alright?
She didn't mention it, so neither did he, but Tayuya eyed him so damn smugly on the way back that he couldn't help but suspect that she was very aware of what he had done. That and she kept on telling him that she wanted his babies.
By the fourth time he stopped running into trees.
She wasn't stalking him for once. Hinata still was, but he could lose her easily enough (She didn't dare tail him through the red light district). Just sending young Ko after her was enough most of the times. Tayuya, however, was elusive on that day. And it felt... strange to not have her around. But there was no mission that day, so no reason to assemble the team, and no reason to go look for her if he didn't want to admit that she was more than just a random stalker. And a girl he almost kind of had sex with. The girl that repeatedly told him she wanted his god damn babies!
Hm. Well, over the last two months she had been rather persistent so chances were high she'd be back tomorrow, nothing to worry about.
Only that she didn't return tomorrow.
He had to admit, it worried him. Were could she be? As far as he knew, she had no family, not eve friends, here in Konoha and had basically spent all her time around him. Or on his couch. Or in his tent on missions. So were could she suddenly have gone? He checked Ichiraku's first, probably worried the shit out of Teuchi when he didn't eat any ramen, and tried Training Ground 7 next. They had been there for training before, but the large field with the stream to the side was void of life. He didn't find her atop the mountain, couldn't find a trace of her at the barracks some chunin tended to use and no ANBU at the HQ had seen or heard of her.
Now he was worried.
His last resort had been asking his father - mostly because his mother was also in the office - and he doubted he could bear the smug look on both of their faces. Good thing he already moved out. He arrived close to noon at the tower, greeted the old man - smoking his pipe like there was no tomorrow, and strode past the secretary that tried to chat him up with a polite nod.
"Dad- I mean, Lord Hokage? You wouldn't happen to have-" He stopped just short of the chair in front of the desk. "Uhm. What's happened?" he asked his mother, who was perched on the desk, flipping though some papers she held.
She waved him off. "Your father managed to pile his own work upon himself." Oh yeah, he could see that. His father was literally burried an an ocean of sheets of papers. Only a hand peeked out from under it, laying morosely on the desk. "That's what happens when one doesn't sign anything that goes over his desk for a whole week. It came back double." She smiled at him. "So, you needed something? You don't get off leave yet, though."
He watched as his father's hand twitched a bit. The blob was overdoing it with the drama. Wouldn't be the first time... "Uh, no," he told her, "I was just... uhm, kinda looking for, well, Tayuya?"
His mother's smile widened. Frightfully so. Oh gods this had been a mistake!
"Oh you know what? Never mind," he backpedaled, backing out of the office, "I didn't really-"
Kushina's hand landed harshly on his shoulder, gripping it like a vice. He may or may not have whimpered. "Hmm, Tayuya, you say," she all but purred. "Is there something I should know about the two of you? Hm?"
He did whimper this time.
Three days passed until he met her again. On a solo mission no less. Then again, finding her in one of Orochimaru's hideouts was less of a surprise than finding her leading a normal life. There was a lot of people in the hideout, a lot of gruesome leftovers of some experiments as well. Anger boiled in his gut.
He broke the neck of some scientist with a little too much vigor, almost tearing the head off. If those fuckers had touched her- He didn't think he'd be able to keep it down. Was she wounded? Drugged? Dead? A lot of possibilities and safe for "imprisonment" none of them were anywhere near appealing.
He worried his ass of on the way through at least three floors underground so when he quietly unlocked a random door and slipped inside, finding Tayuya grumpily sitting on the camp bed there, all he could reliably say was, "Uh, hey."
She glared at him and a rather pathetic squeak escaped him as he moved to take of the manacles that bound her to the bed-frame, chakra sealing, he noted. "You sure took your sweet ass time, lover boy." She stood, trying and failing to hide a severe limp, and stalked out of the room. He was about to shout after her, warn her that he had sneaked in here for fucks sake and that there were still guards around, when she suddenly whistled sharply in the door way. The chakra that came with the sound made his head spin and was followed by a bunch of thudding noises from the hallway.
"Well?" she asked from the doorway, a smug grin on her face that didn't reach her eyes, "What are we waiting for? Get us the fuck out of here. Not like anyone's left to stop us..."
She had indeed knocked out every single person he had missed or just sneaked past. To say he was impressed was kind of an understatement. Still, even without anyone in their way, it took longer to get out than when he had been sneaking inside. Her limp was serious, her leg probably broken, but she was too stubborn to let him just carry her. Or maybe it was just a lot of pride.
"You could have showed up a lot earlier, ya know?" she said about halfway through the second floor. She was clutching her side, where the shirt was stained with dried blood. A new scar, he imagined.
"Why would they abduct you again?" he asked. She had been within the walls of Konoha. How did that happen in the first place?
She stopped, turning her head to grin at him. Again, it didn't reach her eyes and it bothered him deeply. "Oh, my smokin' hot bod has been Snake-Pedo's plaything for a long time, lover boy. You'd imagine he left traces he didn't want anyone to find."
He frowned. He didn't quite want to imagine that. "Why didn't you ask for protection?"
She began walking again, steadying herself against the wall as they ascended the last flight of stairs. "I had you, hand't I?"
In the week after he brought her back, Tayuya was hospitalized. Every single day he would visit her thrice. For every meal, for every other occasion he could think of. Her smile wasn't the same anymore, her eyes weren't sparkling anymore. He had disappointed her. And he couldn't bare the thought. She had been surprised when he first showed up. Surprised! Some nurse tried to stop him from entering the next time and for a moment he had directed every ounce of self-loathing and stress at her with a single glare that had her faint on the spot. Awkward, that was.
"I'm sorry," he had said, first thing after he entered her room.
She had smiled, waved him off. It didn't reach her eyes and his heart ached, seeing her propped up in the bed, paler than she had been before.
He wasn't sleeping. Not really. Hospital chairs were terribly uncomfortable and he couldn't bring himself to leave her for an extended period of time. After a week of bunking in the hospital, it was Itachi of all people who approached him. At least it wasn't his mother...
"You are far too stressed," the Uchiha said.
Naruto glared tiredly at him. "I'm tired," he admitted. "Nothing more."
Itachi glanced at the door he was more or less guarding. "Don't you think your should just talk to her?"
He snorted. "Like you would know any about that."
"I'm married, aren't I?"
Well damn. That he was. "How's the wife?" he decided to ask.
"Good enough to be above serving as your distraction."
Fuck. He sighed. "I can't just...," he shook his head, helplessly gesticulating with his hands. "... Talk to her!"
"Do you think silently watching over her will solve it? Because, I assure you, there are seven ANBU doing that already."
He sighed, a noise that sounded far too defeated to him. He wt his lips. "What... What would I tell her? That I'm sorry?" He laughed humorlessly. "Did that already."
Itachi gave him a pet on his bowed head. The fuck? He was older than him! "Small steps, Uzumaki. I believe you told me the same when I told you about Shizune."
Asshole. Using his own advise against him.
He stayed in her room after the nurse left with the empty food tablets. He opened and closed his mouth several times but couldn't even find it in himself to apologize again. She was staring at him, not a hint of the spark that had been there weeks ago was left in her eyes.
Small steps. But in which god damn direction? "How... How did you end up with the Snake in the first place?" Well, that was something and, admittedly, he had been curious before.
Tayuya looked out of the window. Silently. Despite popular believe, Naruto really liked the quiet, an escape of sorts, but this was killing him. "Some two decades ago, I guess," she said. He thought she was trying to sound nonchalant but all that achieved was a hollow bitterness. "No more than a fucking child back than. Stole my right out of the cradle, you could say." Her face was empty when she faced him. "Don't remember my parents, don't even care all that much anymore, but I know that's I'm an Uzumaki. At least, to some degree. Though that was enough for the snake fucker to take me and kill everyone else."
He didn't interrupt her once in the hours that followed. All he did do was give her a glass of water when her throat got too sore to speak. She had a lot to tell, a lot of things he couldn't even have imagined had he known of every single scar she bore. The stories behind them were all the more gruesome. Experiments, operations, training, simple violence and abuse, fun! He committed it all to memory. Every night she had spent shivering in a cell, on an operation table, in a torture chamber.
"I was kinda ready to give up, you know?" she said, so quiet at this point, that he had sat himself down at her bedside instead of awkwardly standing in the room. "But then you attacked the base. Probably tried to be all sneaky and shit but you actually really suck at that." He really took offense to that. It was Kakashi who couldn't sneak for shit. "You killed the guy that was supposed to.. prepare me for another operation." She met his searching gaze and suddenly, her eyes were alight again. A shred of hope found hold in his heart. "You ripped that cell door open, covered in blood n' shit, and told me I could leave. That I was safe now."
He didn't remember. Not her specifically. He had torn a lot of doors open that day, probably said the same thing to a two dozen girls alone. But what he did remember was her showing up half an hour later, wrecking havoc in one of the bigger labs. "I remember," he said, hoarsely. "I also remember you tearing that big lab to shreds."
She laughed bitterly. "Oh you bet I did. Lost a lot more in there than some blood," she spat. "And then you showed up. The strongest guy we had there, some asshole that beat the shit out of me for Training every once in a while, and you snapped him like a bloody twig." She shook her head. "Fuck, that was so god damn cool, by the way." She smiled, it reached her eyes, and he almost forgot to smile sheepishly in response. "Again yo told me to get out of here. I wanted to fucking snap at you, because, fuck you, you know? But... you looked at me like... like I was actually fucking human."
He frowned. He didn't remember treating her any different than the eight others he had found on his way down there. "I did? I mean, of course I did."
She nodded, fisting her blanket. "Was the first time I can remember someone didn't look at me with more than pity in their eyes. Or disgust, or loathing or some other shit." Tayuya's gaze was alive with something he couldn't pin down. "You were the first one, lover boy, and I decided that I'd keep you."
Lover boy. He barely kept a stupid grin off his face. "Keep me?" he asked instead.
Her grin was wide and toothy. "Yeah, I be your girl, you be my man. That kinda thing." The smile faltered, as did Naruto's heartbeat. "And then they... got me again."
That they had. Probably right under his nose to. Probably on the way to his apartment. He bit his cheek so hard it bled. "They did," he said, because how could he apologize? He wasn't worth her forgiveness. His jaw flexed as he tried to keep from grimacing. "But... then I got you back," he said, meeting her gaze, hollow as it was. She twitched, her eyes searching his face for... something. And by the gods did he hope she'd find it.
"You did, yeah," she said, a wry smile on her lips. "But maybe a bit too late."
"Too late for what?" he asked breathlessly. What else had they done to her?
She averted her eyes, instead peering out of the window again. "I don't think I have to bother you about babies anymore."
Infertile. Barren. Lifeless. Orochimaru had had enough ears in Konoha to hear her loud proclamations. The first thing he personally did when she had been in his clutches again was ramming a scalpel into her lower body. The nurses he asked told him it hadn't even healed yet but that they had no way of doing something about the damage already done. Not without making things worse.
For the first time in a week he left the hospital, feeling worse than he had before. He passed Ichiaku's, the smell of ramen dancing around his nose, but he didn't feel hungry at all. He passed Kakashi and Shizune. They said something, but he didn't hear. He felt like shit. Worse than that, actually. And how would Tayuya have to feel? A thousand times over, probably. She didn't ever outright say it, but having children must have been a pretty important wish of hers. One she'd never fulfill.
He ran into someone, mumbled an apology and stepped to the side, but the guy didn't let him pass. "Oi! What-"
"Kid," a familiar voice said, "Got a right mess on your hand, I heard."
"Jiraiya." He really wanted to be happier that his god father was back, but didn't have it in him.
"I think I got a solution for you." It was strange to hear him talk without any preamble.
Maybe he realized just how serious this was. "You can undo what your fucking ex-teammate did?"
Jiraiya winced audibly. "No, but I have another ex-teammate that can."
They had a time limit. The doctors estimated that Tayuya had perhaps a week before the wounds would scar in a way that wouldn't even allow Tsunade to undo it. Naruto didn't want to leave, and neither did Tayuya, but aside from him there was no one fast enough aside from the Hokage himself. He promised he'd return, promised it would be OK, promised everything would be fine, promised a thousand things he hoped he could keep.
He didn't expect her to punch him. "That's for leaving," she hissed. He was about to apologize, fall on his knees or something, when she grabbed his collar with both hands had pulled his lips to hers. Their teeth met painfully hard and he barely had time to return the kiss when it was already over again. "And that's so you come back, idiot."
The grin wouldn't leave his face the entire way to Suna, barely even faltered when he chased Tsunade's trail all the way over to Kiri, but was only an afterthought when after five days he didn't seem to get any closer.
The Land of Snow was even more forbidding than the treacherous mountain paths of Iwa had been. Not to mention that they were still at war, the Land of Snow was involved in their own little rebellion, one that made the search even harder. Entire villages were either missing or had been replaced by military bases. He was cold, hungry and properly exhausted when he found a village to the east of the country that was untouched by the war. There was a tavern that had once been famous for their illegal gambling business, so most definitely a place Tsunade would visit if she wanted to be as far away from Konoha was possible. Without Shizune, the woman was helpless, so she didn't travel as much as she had done right after she left, some eight years ago.
The tavern was shabby at best, but warm at least. Any more time out in the snow and he would have lost some toes.
"A room if you please," he grunted to the innkeep, a toothless old man with more hair on his obnoxiously huge warts than on his head.
The geezer handed him the key wordlessly, just as silently as Naruto handed him enough money to buy out the whole building. He couldn't be bothered at this point. The room was spartan - if that - but it would be enough for the night. The last night before he'd reached his deadline.
The next day was his last shot. Tsunade's trail had been all over the place: Debts she didn't pay, buildings she'd wrecked, butt hurt guys she'd drunk under the next table and the occasional medical miracle. One of those had occurred in said town not two days ago and since no one was talking about a huge debt to collect, Naruto was reasonable sure that the Sannin was somewhere around here.
He fingered his father's kunai, which hung on a chord around his neck, and entered what was supposed to be some underground casino or something similarly shady. The stench of sake and mold almost knocked him out mere seconds after he forced his way inside - using a genjutsu he had sloppily copied from Tayuya, worked just fine against civilians though. The rundown cellar/shack/thing was surprisingly well visited, though the lighting sucked ass so he could barely make out the wall opposite of the entrance.
For Tsunade's sake, he really hoped she was here.
As if in response, a woman bellowed a drunken laugh somewhere to his left. Sure enough, tits too huge to be real and a face to smooth to not be an illusion belonging to none other than the more or less esteemed Tsunade Senju, worst gambler in gambling history and sadly also his target. For a moment he actually thought about trying to convince her to come back. He snorted to himself as he walked over to her table. If Jiraiya couldn't do it, he was in no mood to try. So instead of so much as talking to her, he grabbed his father's kunai by the handle, flared his chakra all over it, grabbed Tsunade's shoulder and dodged the ninja reflex backhand that could have taken his head off, before the both of them vanished in a yellow flash.
He looked terrible. The black eye - though it was already healing - he got from Tsunade didn't exactly make him look like anything more than dead on his feat. The bags under his eyes clearly outdid the ones little Gaara had accumulated in his eight years of gruesome life. Must've said a lot about his own mental health right there. After Tsunade hand backhanded him out of the Hokage tower, he had been in no mood to put up with her but hurt shit and if not for the combined effort of both his mother and his father, he would have kicked her straight to the hospital.
His mother used some Uzumaki bullshit, incurring a debt or some thing, to force Tsunade to do as she was asked - though order was more like it - and ever since he had taken up his old position; glaring at nurses and doctors from the chair in front of Tayuya's room.
The lengths he was going for that girl didn't even disturb him anymore. He'd had the realization before: he was in love, for fucks sake. Adding the fact that she carried her scars with an inordinate amount of pride just tripled the evident affection. She had a lot of baggage, but who didn't these days? He did too, after all. A dead teammate, a week spent in some prison in Iwa, war, murder; the... well, standard things, really. Still, despite it all, he knew he was still better off than a lot of others. He had a family, friends and comrades. Tayuya didn't have anyone, so he could understand her wish to have children, a family of her own. Wasn't too far off but it did seem kinda mushy for someone as crass as her.
She was an Uzumaki, though Kushina never could tell of which family - because somehow, there were at least eighty-three separate lines of Uzumaki and... who the hell even kept track of that? His father had long since agreed to integrate her into the shinobi corps - and the family, which he pathetically failed at to hide.
He glanced at- tried to glance at a clock but there was none in the god damn hallways. How long had they been in there? Were things going alright? Did... did she fail? Had he been too late? Great, this was going to drive him crazy. He was just short of storming the room when Kakashi and Itachi both showed up to put his ass back into the chair.
"You really need to relax these days," Kakashi drawled, nose already buried in one of Jiraiya's smutty books.
"An exercise in patience never hurt anyone before," Itachi added, taking the chair to his left.
He snorted. "That ain't no exercise, it's driving me freakin' crazy!"
"But that won't change anything, won't it?" the Uchiha said.
"Wise ass...," he grumbled under his breath. But taking his mind off everything for just a second had already helped him relax considerably. "Don't you have a wife to bother these days?"
Itachi smiled thinly at him. "I do. How about you?"
Bitch ass, smug bastard...
"Yo."
He faltered mid sprint through the door. The hell!? Had she been replaced with some Kakashi clone? He prayed to every god under the stars that nothing like that happened. Tsunade, who was standing at Tayuya's bedside, threw him a nasty glare.
"She's still drugged." With her piece said, she stalked out of the room but not before trying to backhand him once more. She missed, of course, but the draft of wind that followed her passing arm almost shoved him into the next wall. She slammed the door shut with enough force to splinter the wood and Naruto was seriously glad she hadn't tried to seriously kill him.
"Yo-Ho!" Tayuya greeted again, the smile on her face so dopey and dreamy it made her look like some ditz. How hard did Tsunade drug her?
"Hey." Well great, that was lame. "How are you doing?"
"High as a kite, lover boy, what do you think?"
Okay, still Tayuya in there. He laughed nervously. "Oh, well, you know... never liked hospitals all that much."
She raised an eyebrow at him, squinting. "And you think I do, shithead? I've got my share of operations, thank you very much. Now get over here, these meds make my vision blurry."
Seriously, what did they give her? "And, uhm, how did-"
She cut him off by slamming a finger into his mouth. He suspected she tried shushing him but utterly failed. She tasted of disinfectant. With a thoughtful frown, she removed the finger and stared at it. Before putting it in her own mouth.
Whaaaat?
She shook her head. "Mh," she grunted, "Not the same."
"N-Not the same as what?" What was she even talking about? He seriously question Tsunade's medical expertise if she drugged her patient hard enough to drive them... to this.
"Come 'ere, lover boy," she huffed, gesturing for him to come closer.
He obeyed but as soon as he was within arms reach of her again, she all but pulled him onto the bed and gave him the sloppiest kiss he ever had. Not that he was complaining. No... no, not at all. Fact was, he was kinda losing himself a bit. Yeah, that was something he could get used to. She didn't taste of anything in particular, probably hadn't eaten in a while, and yet he knew that nothing and no one would ever taste like she did.
When she finally pulled back for air, she grinned smugly at him, though her eyes were tired. "That's better," she whispered, licking her lips.
He swallowed. Hard. Gods above. Did he get to do that again? Ah, fuck it. He kissed her again, she didn't stop him. It was great.
He fell asleep on her bed. Tsunade took a great deal of pleasure in throwing him out of it and into the opposite wall.
"Was that really necessary, cow tits? He's a real nice body pillow, you know?"
"Shut up, brat, you better be glad I came by when I did, otherwise this wouldn't have worked as flawless as it did."
Listening to them as he tried to pick himself up from the ground, he gathered that everything had turned out well enough. Thank the sage, really. Though he had forgotten the unease yesterday in whatever heated make-out session it had become, it had still lurked in the back of his mind. He heaved a sigh of relive as he pulled himself up again, only to have a clipboard smash right in his face. Courtesy of Tsunade no doubt.
"Ouch," he deadpanned. "Was that necessary?"
"Read it, brat," Tsunade huffed at him, followed by something silvery. He ducked out of the way and the scalpel went straight though the wall behind his head.
"AGH! MY EYE!"
Tsunade sighed. "Well, work calls." With that, she left the room.
Wow. That was, uh, pretty messed up. He glanced back at Tayuya, who was grinning at him so widely it must have hurt. "Good news then?" he asked.
"You fucking bet it is! Come 'ere!" Having heard that one before, Naruto approached with high hopes, though Tayuya didn't reach for his collar, but the clipboard he was still carrying. "Look!" Peering down at what was probably an x-ray of... Tayuya's lady bits, he was at loss. Not because he was somehow overwhelmed, but more because he had no clue what to make of it? Was that good? Normal? Better than normal?
"Uh... That good?" he tried.
She slapped him with the clipboard. Thankfully more playfully than aggressively. He doubted his head could take any more for one morning. "Of course it is, you idiot! Look at it! It's normal! Like I hadn't been stabbed thirty times over at all!"
Thirty times-?! No, no... calm down. Too late for raging over that now. "Well, congrats, I guess," he said, grinning at her.
"Oh we gotta celebrate this! Get some booze and-!"
"NO!" a voice from behind them interrupted. Naruto swiveled around and found that an eye, Tsunade's eye, was glaring at them through the hole in the wall her scalpel had left. "No booze or any kind of alcohol until you got all the drugs out of your system!" The eye vanished and her voice followed once more, though distant. "Alright... uh, Ebisu, was it? Let's pull that out, shall we?"
"Uh, do I get an anesthetic?" a male voice answered frightfully. "Or maybe just- YEOUCH! MY EYE!"
Tayuya huffed, content with ignoring whatever horror show went down next doors. "Well fuck." She eyed him with a predatory gleam in her eyes. He didn't know whether to tremble with fear or joy. "Until the drugs are out of my system, huh?" A grin split her face. "Better get my blood pumpin', then, lover boy!" She grabbed his shirt, pulling him close, whispering. "And maybe some babies on the way."
"DON'T YOU DARE!" Tsunade hollered from beyond the wall, but neither Tayuya nor him paid nay mind to her.
Tsunade never really came to like him. She took Tayuya like a mother and him like the scum of humanity that got into her daughter's pants. Even years later she still threw whatever she had at hand at the moment in his general direction. One would think that she'd mellow out with age but no, apparently something like that didn't happen to Uzumaki women.
Pity, that.
As Tayuya said, there were babies along the way. Not just one, not just two, not three and even four was still one short. No less than five little children did he foster. One might want to mention that that were two sets of twins and an older sister to two twin brothers and two twin sisters each. His mother was besides herself with joy, his father feared the worst - with proved to be true, babysitting Tayuya's children proved difficult for anyone but the parents himself and, surprisingly Kakashi - Tsunade's maternal instincts seemingly forced her to endure his presence almost every single day just to check up on the children and Itachi was adamant that is lone son would one day marry his youngest daughter.
Never before had Naruto fantasized about murdering a toddler in cold blood.
When the war ended, eight years after he initially met Tayuya, things calmed down considerably. The demand for Shinobi was cut clean in half and many were content with retiring early. Naruto was among them. He spent his days trying to get his children to stop swearing in front of their grandmother, tried to keep that little Uchiha brat that Itachi called his son as far away from as daughters as humanly possible, and somehow even managed to become Hokage along the way.
He still wasn't entirely sure how that happened. One day, his father had waltzed into the nursery while he had been busy changing diapers of four babies at once -the twin brothers were but a year older than their sisters- and put the Hokage hat on his head. "You do you, son," he had said, and vanished in a yellow flash.
Well, that was anticlimactic.
And for years he would curse his old man for literally dumping the job on him. Though he would immediately stop complaining when Tayuya sashayed her way into the office, closed the door behind her, and smiled widely at him.
"Come on, we are going to have some ramen."
Shit.
He was still in love.
