Chapter Text
<Naruto>
The sliding paper door to Kakashi and Anko's room stuck half-open in its wooden track.
Naruto leaned his weight heavily against the rough cedar-paneled wall, desperate to take the pressure off his unstable right shoulder.
His stomach clenched, a cramp twisting up his gut.
Sylvie stood next to him, looking as though she held a live explosive.
The heavy, stiff weight of his rolled-up orange jacket clearly made her anxious. She clutched it tightly against her ribs, her knuckles turning bone-white under the strain. She shifted nervously from foot to foot, biting her lower lip hard enough to leave a white indent.
A faint flush crawled up her neck, and her eyes kept darting away from the dark crust staining the fabric, her own stomach clearly churning at the sight of the blood.
Anko leaned against the doorframe, her arms crossed, masking her own post-mission exhaustion behind a smirk.
"Is there a specific way to get... um... really stubborn stains out of the mesh?" Sylvie asked, her voice tight and breathy. "Without ruining it?" She shot a quick, sideways glance at Naruto, clearly avoiding saying the word blood out loud.
Anko blinked. A beat of silence stretched down the hallway.
The Jōnin reached out, pinching both of Sylvie's cheeks and pulling them outward. "Is my chibi kuebiki trying to become ANBU now too?"
"Whath do you mean?" Sylvie groaned, her words completely muffled by the pinch.
Anko released her, wiping a smudge of ash from her own cheek. "So you weren't spying? Naruto didn't just make a joke about my coat grime?"
Naruto’s eyes widened. He threw his good hand up in a frantic, defensive wave. "NO! I swear on the Hokage!"
Anko crossed her arms again, raising a single, skeptical eyebrow. "You swear on the granny?"
Naruto waved his left arm faster, wincing as the sudden motion jostled his bad shoulder. "Ugh! That's not what I meant!"
Anko waved him off with a dismissive flick of her wrist. "Go take a walk while the girls clean. Dinner in thirty."
Naruto paused. His stomach gnawed at his insides again, sending a painful, audible rumble vibrating against his ribs. "...deal."
He turned and headed down the wooden stairs. The dry, cedar-scented heat of the inn lobby vanished the moment he pushed through the front doors, stepping out onto the wooden decking. The freezing mountain fog immediately bit at his exposed face. The sudden chill sliced right through the damp fabric of his mesh shirt, raising goosebumps across his arms and making his teeth chatter.
A wet, dragging scrape caught his attention.
Naruto looked down.
A teenager dragged himself across the frost-rimed wooden planks, his tunic clinging to his skin with freezing droplets of sweat, his fingers clawing desperately at the shallow grooves of the decking. His breath caught sharply, tightening in his chest with shallow, rattling gasps as his entire frame shuddered with exhaustion.
"Fo...oood...." the boy wheezed, his face planting flat into the hard wood.
Naruto dropped to his left knee, a sudden jolt of adrenaline temporarily overriding his heavy fatigue. Someone needed help. A heavy tightness clamped around Naruto's chest. Sweat broke out across his forehead, stinging his cuts, as he grabbed the stranger's shoulder with his good hand and hauled him upward.
The abused muscles in Naruto's thighs screamed in protest at the sudden exertion, a sharp burn flaring in his calves.
The stranger's dark navy, sleeveless tunic clung tightly to his damp skin, layered over a long-sleeved, off-white undershirt. A wide, khaki-colored belt cinched his waist, sporting a silver zipper pocket directly against the front.
"Hey! Stay with me!" Naruto grunted, taking the teen's dead weight entirely on his left side. "What's your name?"
Choppy, dark brown hair fell across the boy's face as his dark grey eyes fluttered open, projecting a guarded, intense focus even through the delirium. "Idate... Wasabi..."
"Wasabi?" Naruto echoed, his face scrunching in total confusion. He shrugged, pushing past the ache in his legs.
A weird name meant nothing to an empty stomach.
He hauled Idate fully to his feet.
Draping the older boy's arm over his uninjured left shoulder, Naruto helped him back toward the inn's front doors. Every step felt like a jagged knife driving into his ribs, forcing him to suck in shallow, ragged breaths through his teeth.
Idate's dark, open-toed shinobi sandals scuffed uselessly against the floorboards, forcing Naruto to carry almost the entire physical load. A needle-like line of fire traced across Naruto's unstable collarbone. The crushing weight made the exhaustion creep rapidly back into his spine, a deep, sickening burn settling into his lower back.
Every step felt like fire against his calves, a deep, searing burn that spread up into his thighs.
The cedar-scented heat hit them again. Naruto stumbled toward the center of the lobby, gasping for air, struggling to balance Idate's slumping mass while keeping his own throbbing right arm tucked safely against his side.
Footsteps thudded down the wooden staircase. Anko and Sylvie descended. Anko carried her filthy trenchcoat rolled into a tight bundle under her arm. Without it, she wore her chain-mail mesh tank directly over a flesh-colored top. Sylvie followed a step behind, still carrying Naruto's ruined jacket like a volatile explosive.
Anko froze on the bottom step. Her breath caught audibly. The relaxed, teasing demeanor she used to mask her fatigue shattered instantly. Her light-brown eyes locked onto the boy leaning heavily against Naruto, widening in complete, baffled recognition. She raised a trembling finger, pointing straight at him.
"IDATE?!" Anko screamed, the sheer volume vibrating the shōji screens across the lobby like a physical shockwave.
Idate’s dark grey eyes snapped wide open. The exhaustion evaporated instantly. He jolted fully upright, planting his sandals firmly against the cedar planks.
The sudden, frantic movement violently wrenched Naruto's injured shoulder. A blinding, white-hot spike of agony tore through the joint, radiating down to his fingertips and completely severing his motor control. His balance failed entirely as Idate knocked him backward.
Naruto hit the floor with a heavy, rib-rattling thud. The impact drove the air from his lungs in a painful whoosh. His vision instantly blurred into a haze of grey static. A wave of dizzying vertigo spun the wooden ceiling beams above him, the sudden drop making his stomach churn violently with nausea. He lay there gasping like a beached fish on the tatami border, entirely unable to pull oxygen past the searing, stinging burn radiating from his collarbone. Every pulse sent a fresh throb through his arm.
Idate didn't even look down at the kid he had just flattened. He stared at the woman on the stairs, his jaw working silently for a split second as his brain struggled to process her face. Then, he thrust his own finger right back at the Jōnin, his jaw dropping completely open. "ANKO-CHAN?!"
"Sylvie..." Naruto groaned from the floor, his face contorted in agony as he completely refused to move his throbbing shoulder.
Kakashi leaned out from around the second-floor banister, his silver hair flopping over his headband. He looked down at the tangled mess in the lobby. "What are you doing, Naruto?"
Sylvie turned around on the stairs, blinking up at the silver-haired ninja. "Kakashi-sensei?"
Kakashi looked up from his book, raising his single visible eyebrow. "Why are you all being so loud?"
Idate and Anko remained completely frozen in place. Their mouths hung agape, fingers still aggressively pointed at each other in total, paralyzed disbelief.
"Uh..."
The elderly innkeeper shuffled out from the back corridor, holding a wooden tray filled with steaming tea. He looked at the screaming Jōnin, the pointing teenager, and the genin groaning on the floor.
"Your, uh... dinner is ready."