| [Mar. 2nd, 2011|11:12 pm] |
The riverbank was teeming with small bodies. The Inuzuka children had already begun stripping down to their skin, boys and girls alike. Ibiki looked down at Hana. “You’re Kiba’s big sister, huh?”
“Uh huh.”
Idate ran over before the conversation could continue, concern written all over his face, which looked strangely plain in the sea of clan-tattooed Inuzuka cheeks. “Niisan, I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”
Ibiki laughed, looking at the swarm of naked and half-naked Inuzuka kids who were well on their way to complete and unconcerned indecency. “I don’t think anyone else did, either,” he said. “It doesn’t look like you need one.”
Idate looked dubious.
Kiba raced over then, naked as the day he was born with a tumble of puppies close at his heels. “Aren’t you gonna swim, Ibiki? Did you already eat your cake? Ma says you have to wait an hour after eating to swim, but only if you ate a lot of meat, and cake isn’t meat. I bet you could make a meat cake if you wanted.” He paused for breath and gave Idate a coolly appraising look. “Don’t you know how to swim?”
Idate was outraged. “Yes. Duh. Everyone knows how to swim. I can swim really good.”
“Bet I’m faster,” Kiba said, arms crossed.
“Bet you’re not,” Idate retorted. He shimmied out of his t-shirt, hesitated with his hands at the waistband of his shorts, and looked up at Ibiki.
Ibiki grinned. “Idate wants to know if he needs a bathing suit,” he said.
Kiba gave Idate another incredulous look, but it was Hana who spoke. “He could swim in his underpants. Sometimes people do.”
“Underpants, underpants, underpants,” Kiba chanted, putting a tune to it so it became a song.
Idate looked mortified.
Ibiki glanced at Hana, who seemed wholely uninterested in all this young male nudity being pondered. “Go on, boyo,” he said. “You’ll be a faster swimmer if you’re naked.”
“Yeah,” Kiba put in. “That’s why Inuzikas swim naked, cause it makes us faster.”
Idate hesitated a moment more, then made up his mind, skinned out of the rest of his clothes, and raced down to the water’s edge.
“Stay in the shallows,” Ibiki called. He waited for the splash, as Idate and Kiba entered the water at the same time. Then a smile at Hana. “Are you going to swim?” |
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