NARUTO IN SUMMER

It goes without saying that I do not own 'Naruto', unfortunately...

"He's like the seasons y'know." Kakashi told the absolutely uninterested bartender as the man walked away. "Warm, hot, cold...like a freaking stormfront through my life that I cannot get out of the way of." A sigh went through the Jounin as he brought the small pottery cup back up to his lips, sipping at the fiery liquid as he thought some more. Things were certainly as blustery and as changeable as the weather at home. Sipping and pondering, marvelling at his own wisdom; Kakashi nodded at the accuracy of that comparison. Like the seasons. Naruto. Hot and golden and bright and...

He finished the bit of sake left in his cup and nodded again, signalling for another by tapping on the blotchy surface of the bar. The sharp sound summoned the silent bartender from the other end of the long shadowy room to bring him more of the potent elixir as Kakashi peered blearily at him. Even on this long summer's day barely any light penetrated the patched curtains over the door, and there was something kinda gummy in his eye that made it difficult to see.

"Seasons..." The word stuck there, the rest of whatever he'd been thinking lost under the kindly influence of the spirit in his refilled cup, his single grey eye slowly growing unfocused. Kakashi's brow furrowed, and his hitai-ate crumpled as he searched, but he'd lost whatever his metaphor had been in the first place, and so he sighed and sipped, and moved on.

"I mean, damn, ever since he took the robe I've barely seen him. Meetings. Meetings. Meetings...ya know what I mean?" A grand gesture meant to elicit sympathy spilled opalescent liquor over a fingerless glove, and Kakashi glared for a moment at that dark wet spot of lost possibilities before dropping the tiny, empty cup back to the wooden top of the bar.

"Another here." Too much sake was making him lo-loquacious and he knew it for his voice was unnecessarily loud in the empty bar, but damnit all, the last he'd gotten "...laid was months ago!" His own words rattled in his ears as another fresh cup was set in front of him, and he immediately curled his fingers around it.

The silent man behind the bar didn't say a word to him about his outburst. Not even the rise of a dark, heavy brow in reaction to such an embarrassing complaint from the husband of their new Rokudaime. As a repeat customer, Kakashi guessed that the guy was all too aware of his usual reticent nature, and a long association with the drunk Shinobi of Konoha had inured him to certain things, but...

"Aaa...whatever." Kakashi grumped, rolling the cup full of sake across his uncovered bottom lip as he inhaled the heady fumes rising from it. "It's just...y'know...so hot and cold now.

Hot and cold just like the autumn, bloody weather can't make up his mind. Hot like the red of the flames at the bottom of Naruto's Hokage robes, and the orange of his husband's usual shirt, and cold... "Damn him..." Kakashi sighed and sipped. There hadn't been any heat for him though, had there?!

"And damn Gai!" Rearing back, he stared a bit blurry-eyed at the obviously empty doorway and scowled, wondering where the friend who'd promised to drink with him had buggered off to. "He's supposed to be here."

Slapping a hand down onto the bar to emphasize injustice of his point only resulted in Kakashi being splattered with water from one of the many rings his drinks had created on the scratched wood, and a single grey eye blinked slowly at the unexpected shower. For a long moment he sat there, unfocused, without a single coherent thought, before a small, gaseous belch escaped him.

Yeah...autumn... The thought came back to him along with a muzzy epiphany. And a bad smell.

Dropping his head down into his wet palm, Kakashi barely felt the dampness on it transfer to the fabric of his hitai-ate just as a sulphurous odour scoured the inside of his nose and made him snort. "It was kinda my fault."

His fault. His idea. And it had seemed like such a good one at the time. No one was ever supposed to know. Sneak out, sneak back in, have a bit of fun...where was the harm in that?!

Autumn had gone to winter pretty quickly in their apartment after his foolhardy plan had been put into motion-and then stopped dead in its tracks. The chopping motion he made with his left hand in remembrance of that aborted idea nearly had him spilling his sake but he managed to save the precious liquid, and he took another sip of that potent rice liquor as he reminisced. Perhaps it had been a bad thing to do, but he'd been bored, and he'd been antsy—and he was the husband of the Hokage—but he was still Sharingan no Kakashi...was he not?!

Understanding the need to keep the family of their current leader safe was one thing, but stranding him here in Konoha when he was used to going out on missions all of the time was

"Torture. Kami damn them!" Heaving out a breath that could have downed an ostrich, Kakashi hiccoughed forlornly and stared into his empty cup. How had that happened?. Waving a pleading hand at the barkeep, who was way down at the other end (again, damnit!), he continued to talk, feeling it all spill from his alcohol-liberated lips. "I wasn't asking for much." He whined, that waving hand making its way up to his silver hair to clutch at it in distress. "Just a D-rank or C-rank, nothing too dangerous."

Escort missions. Bandits. Nothing that would even challenge a Shinobi of Kakashi's stature. There wouldn't even have been any good fights! Just something...anything...to do.

"But ohhh..." And his groan was like the moan of an icy wind in the cracks around the window in winter. Didn't things get cold after that?

The tiny clink of a fresh cup being set before him drew Kakashi's pitiable thoughts away from himself and he picked up the great boon that had just appeared out of nowhere. "Ahhh..." A sip of fire burning into his gut dispelled notions of blizzards and cold shoulders and chilly beds. And the way that those lovely sky blue eyes had turned so icy.

"Like the bottoms of those ice mountains that float in the Northern Sea." He announced to no one in particular, for there was just him and—someone in the bar. "Icebergs they call 'em. Such a pretty, pretty blue but soooo damned cold." A shiver went up his spine as he thought of those eyes and the way Naruto had been staying to his own side of their bed.

"Sso c-cold."

Though, he had to admit, even with his befuddled thoughts, that things had been slightly warmer lately, so perhaps a thaw might be in his future.

"Spring is g-goooddd..." Kakashi slurred, leaning his head down so that the metal plate on his hitai-ate clinked dully against the bar. "Sooo w-warm. So b-bright." There'd been tea at his plate this morning, and broiled saury on the stove. Perhaps Naruto was forgiving?

"I l-love h-him." A hiccough blew out onto the stained wood of the bar, the potency of his own breath nearly making his eyes water. "And if s-summer's coming I'm gonna l-love him even m-more."

Naruto. Kami. Naruto in summer with the heat and the glory of sunny skies and hot touches. The slick of sweat on their bodies and the sudden thunder of their heartbeats like the onset of an August storm. A shiver that had nothing to do with cold travelled through Kakashi's nerves and sinews and he raised a slightly clearer head from the sticky wood as his focus began to return. "Mmm...summertime." He hummed, and actually waved the bartender away when he would have returned with another round.

Kakashi sat for a minute, contemplating his jumbled thoughts, following their meandering reasonings here and there until just the exercise of it cleared his head even more. Heh, stupid. He thought to himself. Such silly sentimental maunderings could only come from too much booze. Tapping calloused fingertips against the damp, worn wood, he counted off all of the reasons why he was a lovesick fool for his husband, not the least of which was that the metaphor about Naruto being like summer was too damned fantastically true.

With one last tap he stood, allowing himself a few moments of orientation as he searched his weapons pouch for his cash. Pulling out his wallet he dropped far too much to the surface of the bar, a single grey eye finding—and holding—ones of perceptive brown. "For you, bartender-san." Kakashi grunted, his gaze holding steady. "For your excellent service."

And for his continued silence on what a chatty drunk he'd been, and... Just what the topic of his sake-loosened tongue had been while he'd been that chatty.

As he made his way only slightly unsteadily to the curtained doorway Kakashi reassured himself that the man wouldn't talk. That there was some type of pact or something between bartenders and their customers. Wasn't there? Like a therapist or something?

An instant of doubt made him reach a hand towards his hitai-ate, and the powerful temptation to just ensure his privacy with a single glance was caught, strangled, and dropped in a pocket of 'don't go there': It wouldn't be fair of him to use the Sharingan on a civilian. "Oh..." Halting just inside of the doorframe, Kakashi looked back, his bearing now giving away none of the sake sloshing around inside of him. "If a big, loud, green-clad bundle of Gai-ety happens to come looking for me..." He said nonchalantly, slouched carefully into his most careless pose. "Tell him I've gone to celebrate Geshi with my husband."

If there was a hint of a smirk beneath the navy mask that was neither here nor there, for Kakashi gave the shadowed, silent man a conspiratorial, slightly off-the-mark salute of two fingers to the brow and disappeared through the door with hardly a flap of the cloth. There was a sun to bask under, after all. And eyes like the mutable blue skies to make darker. Golden skin to make glisten, and breath to make shorter, and...

And...

The longest day of the year might not last long enough for him to show his summer lover just what a huge ass he'd been.

*This will have a second part called "Kakashi in Winter" that comes from Naruto's p.o.v. It's already been written and needs some editing.
Geshi is the Japanese name for the summer solstice, which apparently is a time of celebration in that country almost equal to Christmas.
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