| Comfort Trap | [May. 24th, 2015|07:40 pm] |
[Takes place the afternoon of May 14, Yondaime Year 5, the day after Trouble Round My Door]
On Saturday afternoon, Ogata-san didn't come to pick Naruto up from preschool.
Dad came instead. Naruto knew it from the moment he squeezed past Shikamaru out the door and saw most of the moms and nannies bunched up in a cluster at the play-yard fence, like pigeons on a roofline with a cat at the other end. Only Dad wasn't going to eat them.
He was just standing at the gate, chatting to Shikamaru's mom and Kiba's uncle, and he wasn't even wearing his white Hokage coat. He had jounin blues and a flak vest, just like Kiba's uncle. Nobody was going to mistake him for Kiba's uncle, though. He didn't have the tattoos, or the big brindled dog looking over the fence and perking up her ears when she saw Kiba come shrieking.
Since Kiba was shrieking, and trying to scramble over the fence and launch himself at the dog, Naruto tried sneaking. Dad was right in front of the gate, but there was a loose board on the side yard that Shikamaru and Naruto had made looser and none of the sensei had found yet. Naruto went that way. He had to wriggle, and he scraped his hand and tore his shirt but only a little. Kiba was still yelling when Naruto stood up.
Dad had stepped aside from the fence, so the more nervous nannies could scrunch past and collect their children. He was still talking to Shikamaru's mom, though now both of them were watching Kiba's uncle wrestle Kiba and the dog out of the flowerbeds. Naruto crept a little closer and heard Shikamaru's mom say, very quietly, "—back to Hikouto?"
"Not yet," Dad said, just as quietly. "They'll survive without him. He's earned some leave. Keep him at home a few days. Tell him Sagara has standing orders to sic the vice-commander on him if she sees him back at HQ before Tuesday."
She looked up sharply at him, and then down. "It's not the vice-commander he should be scared of," she grumbled, but there was a little smile crinkling her dark eyes, like Kakashi when he was trying to pretend he wasn't pleased. She bowed to Dad and went to collect Shikamaru from beneath the shrubbery in the play-yard, and Naruto seized the moment of distraction to fling himself at Dad's back.
Dad caught him, of course. He swung Naruto around in the air—Naruto shrieked with delight, even louder than Kiba—and then pulled him in snug and warm, his chin tucked into the cutout collar of Dad's vest and Dad's breath ruffling his hair. "You weren't creeping up to assassinate me, were you?" Dad said, all growly and low. "I'd hate to have to turn a little kid like you over to Tickles & Interrogation…"
"No tickling!" Naruto struck first, just in case, scrunching his fingers against Dad's ribs. The thick padded jounin vest got in the way. Dad laughed, and tugged Naruto around to ride on his hip as he started down the street towards the village center.
"As it happens," he said, "I may have need of a teammate. Someone bold and crafty, someone no one will ever suspect. I have a mission. It may be dangerous. We need to extract a wounded comrade from a secure facility guarded by ruthless opponents—"
"Who got captured?" Naruto grabbed frantically at Dad's collar, hauling himself up. "Did they get Ogata-san? Fukafuka?" He clutched at Dad's head. "Where's Kakashi-niisan?"
"He's in the hospital," Dad said quickly, steadying Naruto's bottom with one hand and reaching up with the other to untangle Naruto's fingers from his hair. "He's getting better, though. We're going to spring him today, if Rin-chan says we can. Ogata-san and Fukafuka are at home cooking. We'll bring Kakashi home for dinner, okay?"
Naruto relaxed his death-grip, finally, and let Dad pull him back down. Several gold hairs stuck to his fingers. He tried to wipe them off on Dad's shoulders. "I left him First Mate so niisan wasn't alone. Is he sad? Did they take First Mate away?"
"He's got First Mate," Dad reassured him. "He showed me yesterday. And his teammates have been visiting him, too. But his treatment is nearly over, so I thought maybe he could come stay with us for the next few days, while he gets his strength back. Ogata-san'll make sure he eats. And Rin'll stop worrying he's just going to sneak out of the hospital before he's ready to look after himself."
"Niisan doesn't like hospitals," Naruto remembered. "We snuck out together last time." Except Kakashi had stopped at the big front desk to sign lots of papers, so the medics wouldn't panic and send Rin-neesan after him. Then they'd gone back to Kakashi's apartment and played with his dogs and eaten cup ramen for breakfast.
He wanted cup ramen now.
But he also wanted to see Kakashi-niisan, and ramen could always come later. Maybe Ogata-san would let him have a snack before dinner when he brought Kakashi-niisan home. If he was going to help Dad rescue Kakashi-niisan then he was going to be a hero, and heroes deserved feasts.
"Can Ogata-san make shabu-shabu?" He tried climbing up onto Dad's shoulder again, swaying with Dad's swift walk. "For niisan! Because we never had a party for him. We should have cake."
Dad pulled him straight and locked his hands around Naruto's dangling ankles. "For you, or for Kakashi?"
"Kakashi likes cake! It's just a secret," Naruto explained. "Because he thinks he shouldn't."
"Is it a secret you were meant to tell?" Dad asked mildly.
Maybe not. But Dad knew everything anyway, didn't he? Was it still secret-breaking if you told someone who already knew?
Naruto was still wrestling with that when they arrived at the hospital. Dad made his way swiftly through the lobby and up the stairs, collecting bows and exchanging greetings from people in passing; no one tried to stop him, but a tall Hyuuga lady with white eyes and a long white coat tossed Naruto a lollipop. Naruto's hands and face were already sticky with it by the time they arrived at Rin-neesan's office.
It was much smaller than Dad's, with only one window overlooking the busy street below, but the same stacks of paper grew in neatly organized towers from the wooden trays on her desk. She even had the same picture Dad did, of herself and Kakashi and Dad and a black-haired boy with funny goggles.
Naruto saw that picture almost every day. He'd always paid attention to the people he knew, before, ignoring the one he didn't. For the first time, now, he wondered who it was. Obito-san, who'd given Kakashi his eye? Kakashi didn't look happy next to his friend in the picture, but maybe he only got broccoli in his bento that day.
At least Rin in the picture looked happy, with her eyes all squeezed shut by her smile and her fingers making 'victory' signs. Rin in real life looked much tireder, with her long hair pulled back at the base of her neck and a dark pink stain on the front of her white coat, but she still put her pen down and smiled up at him. "Naruto-kun, you've grown!"
He wriggled on Dad's shoulders. "I'm taller than everybody."
"Do you want to see how tall?" Rin rummaged in a drawer for her measuring tape, then pushed her spinny wheely chair back from her desk.
Naruto eyed the chair greedily as Dad gripped him by the waist and swung him down. He'd ride on it later. Last time he spun on it so much it made him sick, but he was bigger now. He ran to the wall by the window, and stood with his back straight and his chin up in the air while Rin-neesan knelt beside him and very carefully measured him. She made a mark on the wall with a pencil above his head.
"Ninety-nine centimeters," she said proudly, sitting back on her heels. "You may be taller than your dad, someday."
"Taller than Kakashi-niisan?" Naruto demanded.
She winked at him. "If you eat your vegetables and drink your milk."
"I had vegetables for lunch," he bragged. "Ogata-san put snowpeas and radishes in my bento. And I ate half Shikamaru's bento too. I'm gonna grow tall—tall—tall— taller than...than Tousaki-san!"
"You might've picked the wrong parents for that, kid," Dad said, with a hint of laughter at the back of his voice. He sank into the chair in front of Rin-neesan's desk and picked up one of the puzzle-boxes perched beside her nameplate. "Your mom was taller than Rin, but not by much."
Naruto looked up at Rin-neesan. She didn't lose her smile, but it did grow a little soft at the edges, and her eyes were sad. She reached up to the third picture on her desk, between the one with Kakashi and the one of her parents. This one had Dad in it too, but it also had Naruto's mom, with her long red hair and her dancing blue eyes. She was leaning over Rin's shoulder and laughing about something. Rin in the picture was laughing too, with her hands up over her mouth, while Dad had one arm around their shoulders and the other stretched up to take the picture.
"We have this one at home," Naruto said. "We have all Mom's pictures at home." He took the picture anyway, leaving sticky thumbprints on the frame, and looked up craftily sideways at Rin. "If you come over for dinner today you can look through the picture-book with me again. You can tell me the story when Mom threw the frying pan at Jiraiya-ojisan's head and it stuck in the wall and she made him buy her a new one."
Rin laughed. "And she made him replaster the wall."
"Though I had to do the repainting," Dad said dryly. "Rin-chan, if Naruto's sly wiles don't make up your mind for you, I promised Kakashi I'd spring him from your latex-gloved clutches today. He can spend a few days in my spare bedroom watching Captain Seaweed with Naruto. If, that is, you think he can be allowed out of the intensive ward." He twisted the puzzle-box sharply and put it back on Rin's desk, all of its colors neatly arranged on its sides. "His pathways seemed to be healing, but I'll defer to your judgment. So long as you're aware that Ogata-san has spent all day in the kitchen, and if Kakashi misses out, you'll have to make up for it by eating his share."
That didn't sound like a punishment to Naruto. |
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