(LIFE IN THE HIDDEN LEAF) CHAPTER FIVE (AKA THE SMUT/EROTICA CHAPTER)

Naruto kissed Hinata, and when she moved closer, his arm came around her without him thinking about it. He could feel the warmth of her against him, familiar enough that he hardly noticed the movement anymore, yet there was still something about having her this close that made the rest of the world seem very far away.

Her fingers slipped into his hair, drawing him closer, and Naruto smiled against her lips as she teased him with the kiss.

He had always liked it when she did that, though he couldn’t remember when he’d first started noticing it. Somewhere along the way, little things like the way she touched him, the way she moved closer when she wanted him near, and the way she could make him forget what he was thinking had simply become part of knowing her.

His hand moved along her back, and he eased himself further into her.

For a moment, he remembered what she’d been like when they were younger, when there had still been so much about her that he didn’t know. He’d been fascinated by all of it, by the way she looked at him, by the courage that seemed to appear whenever something really mattered, and by the way she could still make him feel like an idiot even when she was too shy to say what she was thinking.

He had been nervous around her once.

That seemed strange now.

Hinata’s breath caught beside his ear, and Naruto had to take a slow breath before he could think straight again.

He had expected things to change as the years passed. Maybe he had even assumed they had to. When they were younger, wanting Hinata had been tangled up with the excitement of discovering that someone he loved could want him too. Every new part of their relationship had carried some uncertainty.

There wasn’t much uncertainty left now.

He knew what made her laugh and what annoyed her. He knew how she looked when she’d been awake too long with one of the children and how she tried to pretend she wasn’t tired. He knew which parts of his stories she actually cared about and which parts she listened to because she loved him. He knew that if he left something lying around long enough, he’d probably find it exactly where it belonged the next time he went looking for it because Hinata would have moved it while he wasn’t paying attention.

He knew she would steal half the blankets during the night and deny doing it the next morning. He knew she would get up when Himawari cried even when she could barely keep her eyes open, and he knew she would still insist she had everything handled. He knew that she could look at him from across a room and tell when something was bothering him before he had even decided whether he wanted to admit it.

And somehow, knowing her this well hadn’t made any of this less exciting.

The sound she made brought him back to those first few times they had been together like this. He’d been terrified of doing something wrong. Now he knew the little things that gave her away, the way her fingers tightened against him when she wanted more, the way she would pull him back when he started to slow down, and the way she sometimes buried her face against his neck when she was too overwhelmed to look at him.

There were so many things they no longer needed words for.

The thought lasted only a moment before Hinata’s nails pressed into his back, and his attention returned to her. He had always liked that she could still do that to him, pulling him out of his own head with the smallest reaction. His hand remained against her side as he kissed her again, and the movement of her body against his was enough to leave him struggling to hold onto whatever thought had been there a moment before. For a while, there was nothing else in his head.

Then, somehow, he thought about Boruto.

He wasn’t even sure what had brought the memory back. Maybe it was the thought of how much they had changed since they were young, or maybe it was simply that so much of his life with Hinata was tied to the children. Whatever the reason, he found himself remembering the first time he’d held their son.

Boruto had been so small that Naruto had been afraid to move him too much. He’d held him carefully, barely trusting himself to adjust his grip, while Hinata lay exhausted beside him with her eyes half closed. She looked worn out, but when Naruto brought their son closer, she smiled.

Naruto remembered looking at her then.

He remembered the way she looked at Boruto, and the way she looked at him when she realized he was staring.

Something had settled inside him in that moment. Until then, their life together had still felt like something they were building day by day, something that belonged to the future as much as the present. Holding Boruto made it real in a way Naruto hadn’t expected.

He had a family.

He had Hinata, and now he had their son.

He hadn’t known how much that moment would stay with him. So much so that years later, he still remembered it clearly.

Himawari had brought back some of the same feelings, though by then he understood what being a father actually meant. He remembered Hinata carrying their daughter, and how protective he had been during the pregnancy, constantly trying to do things for her that she was perfectly capable of doing herself. She had eventually learned to ignore him, probably a little too well, and the memory brought a smile to his face.

Hinata noticed.

Naruto kissed her before she could ask what he was thinking.

That was another thing he liked about being married to her. There were moments when he didn’t need to explain himself. She had spent enough years beside him to understand things that he sometimes couldn’t put into words himself.

Her hand moved through his hair again, and Naruto closed his eyes for a moment.

He remembered her sitting at the kitchen table with Himawari asleep against her chest while Boruto tried to convince him that he was old enough to stay awake as long as he wanted. Hinata had looked exhausted, but she’d still smiled when Naruto walked into the room, and for some reason, that ordinary evening had stayed with him.

There were hundreds of moments like that scattered throughout their life together: dinners after long days, a child falling asleep somewhere they weren’t supposed to, Hinata leaning against him while they watched the rain, the two of them lying awake after everyone else had finally gone to sleep. Most of them hadn’t seemed important when they happened, yet years later, they were the moments he found himself remembering.

Hinata’s legs tightened around him and he increased his pace, his thoughts scattering again, leaving him with only pieces of memories and the warmth enveloping him.

He thought about the first apartment they’d shared and the argument they’d had over where to put the table. He had wanted it near the window, while Hinata had insisted it belonged against the wall. She’d eventually won, although he still thought his idea had been better. The memory made him laugh, and Hinata looked at him with an amused expression before dragging his face down to kiss him again.

For a few seconds, Naruto forgot about the table entirely.

That was how it had become with her. Memories didn’t always stay where he put them. One thing led to another, a touch brought back some stupid argument from years ago, a look reminded him of the children, and somehow all of it ended with him looking at the same woman he’d fallen in love with when they were younger.

He had once worried that knowing someone too well might eventually make them seem ordinary.

He’d been wrong.

After all these years, there were things about Hinata he knew without having to think about them. He knew when she was tired from the way she moved around the house, knew when something was bothering her even when she insisted she was fine, and knew how she looked when she was happy to see him come home after being away too long.

He had seen her exhausted after giving birth, with a crying child in her arms and another one pulling at her clothes, and he’d seen her sitting at the kitchen table half asleep while still trying to keep up with everything the children needed. He had seen her angry with him, amused by him, worried about him, and so tired that she could barely keep her eyes open.

He had seen all the ordinary parts of her that nobody else would ever notice, and somehow those were some of the things he found himself remembering most.

She was familiar to him in a way nobody else could ever be, and he still wanted her.

That was what surprised him sometimes. The feeling wasn’t new. If anything, that was what made it strange. It had survived everything that had come after those first years and had become tangled up with all the things they had shared since then: their wedding, their home, the children, the arguments, the mornings when neither of them had slept enough, and the nights when they were too tired to do anything except sit together.

All of it had become part of what he felt when he looked at her.

Hinata’s nails dug even deeper into the skin of his back, and despite how tempted he was, he maintained his pace.

His thoughts came and went without much order after that. He remembered her laughing at something stupid he’d said, Boruto asleep on his shoulder, Hinata stealing half his blanket, and the way she had looked at him when he’d come home late from a mission years ago. One memory led into another until he wasn’t even sure what he had been thinking about in the first place.

He remembered too much.

Or maybe he remembered exactly enough.

She was the woman he came home to.

She was the person who had been there through all of it, through the good days and the terrible ones, through the moments when he felt like he could handle anything and the ones when he had no idea what he was doing. She had seen him become a husband, a father, and all the ordinary versions of himself that existed somewhere between those things.

There was nothing mysterious left between them.

There didn’t need to be.

Naruto rested his forehead against hers for a moment, breathing harder than he had been a few minutes earlier. When he looked at her, she smiled, and he smiled back.

He loved her.

That had been true when he was younger, and it was true now. The difference was everything that had grown around those three words over the years. Their life together, their home, their children, and all the ordinary days neither of them had thought twice about when they were living them.

Those were the things that had made those three words mean something different now.

Naruto eased himself out of her even as he pulled her closer, and the rest of the night slipped away as they picked up their conversation where they had left off.

By the time they finally made it to their room, Naruto was spent and content in a way he hadn’t been when he’d left the council meeting. Hinata rested against him, and he could feel her breathing gradually slow as she drifted toward sleep.

There would be noise in the morning. Boruto would wake up hungry, Himawari would probably want her mother, and Naruto would have another day waiting for him. The Daimyo’s representatives would return later in the week, Kakashi would have another meeting, and Shikamaru would almost certainly find another problem that somehow became Naruto’s problem too.

He’d deal with all of it when the time came.

For now, Hinata was beside him, their children were asleep down the hall, and the house they had built together was still around them.

Naruto found her hand beneath the covers and laced his fingers through hers. He closed his eyes and let the world wait until morning.