Minato/Kushina: It's a Sure Shot, Honey (for helike )
Title: “It’s a Sure Shot, Honey”
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG
Timeline: pre-manga [SPOILERS for the current arc, 498-onwards]
Summary: The less heroic snippets of the two heroes’ life together. [Minato/Kushina]
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi. Title from Sex Never Goes Out Of Fashion by Garbage.
A/N: For once I wasn’t late writing it, but I am late posting it. XDD I wrote it before Chapter 501, but I don’t think the last segment conflicts with it. Also, this turned out more like a series of fragments, and they can be read separately and out of order, I suppose.
Dedication: Happy sliiightly belated Birthday, Magi! <333 Hope you’ll enjoy this!
IT’S A SURE SHOT, HONEY
“You’re the only one who could ever make me lose my cool,” he tells her.
Predictably, five minutes after he saved her, they fought. She could not bring herself to deal with the fact that she had been in need of saving and that he had to be the one to rescue her.
“Could have just thanked me,” Minato pointed out.
Kushina’s cheeks were burning. “Who asked you to barge in?” she snapped. “I had everything under con-.”
And she tripped over a root sticking out of the slippery soil and was a second away from sprawling on the ground when Minato shifted his weight, his movements so swift they were invisible to the naked eye, and caught her in his arms.
“Control,” she breathed stubbornly.
“I can see that.”
Puzzled and infuriated by his cool and confident demeanour, Kushina had virtually no choice but to punch him in the face. Hard. Such a pretty face was almost a pity to ruin; but then, it was too pretty for a guy. He could use a few manly scars - and who was she to deny him that?
Minato released a stifled gasp and started back. Kushina held her balance, assumed a fighting stance and lunged at him. He blocked her blows expertly, but he was unprepared for the overwhelming force of her determination. She whirled around him like a peg top, showering him with angry strikes of her clenched fists, her fiery hair whipping around her like a raging element.
Kushina jumped up and aimed to strike him with her foot. He caught her by the calf and yanked her down, but she wriggled out of his grasp and turned a somersault in the air and landed catlike on her feet, glaring daggers at her opponent. He had always been good, she would give him that.
A smirk tugged at the corners of her lips. All the better.
She leapt at him again, ready to pin him down - and there he was, seemingly open, but then he wasn’t there anymore, and Kushina blinked in surprise and felt a hand wrap around her billowing hair, immobilizing her. She yelped and almost fell backwards. Minato was holding her firmly, the thick red mass knotted around his forearm and a tiny triumphant scowl flickering on his face.
Kushina growled and jerked, ignoring a jolt of pain that went up the roots of her hair into her skin, and craned out her neck as far as she could - and plunged her teeth into Minato’s elbow.
The world stood still, apprehensive, caught in the gap between breaths.
He stared down at her in numb astonishment. She stared up at him with angry eyes, tasting the rough fabric of his sleeve in her mouth.
“You bit me,” he said quietly like it was the most atrocious thing she could do.
The grip on her hair loosened. She pulled back, spitting demonstratively, eyeing him like a predator on the alert. There was no telling what he would do now.
Minato twisted his arm carefully to examine his elbow. Kushina did her best to hurt him, but the pain of the actual bite couldn’t have been too sharp, taking into account the impediment of fabric between the skin and her teeth. Minato fingered a rent in the upper layer of his sleeve, which she had somehow been able to make. When he looked back at her, he seemed almost offended.
“You tore my windbreaker,” he said simply.
She wrinkled her nose with a strange feeling.
Minato’s lips trembled as if he were fighting back an onslaught of emotions.
A moment later, without any prior agreement, both of them burst out laughing.
Kushina collapsed on her knees. She laughed so hard that her stomach was beginning to hurt.
“All right, chili pepper,” Minato said, his voice a little breathless. He held out his hand amicably. “Let’s go home.”
For once, Kushina didn’t even consider refusing. She placed her hand into his palm and let him help her get up. He smiled widely at her and then rubbed his hurt nose. Kushina giggled, slightly perplexed.
“Sorry about that.” She winked at him. “It’s okay though, don’t worry. You still look girly.”
“Someone has to,” he replied nonchalantly. “For both of us.”
Kushina’s jaw dropped in indignation. She was ready to forget their (no doubt temporary) truce and she had already raised her fist, but then he smiled again, even wider, and she looked into his eyes and saw her reflection there. She stood before him, pouting, face as red as her hair that framed her cheeks in tousled locks and swooped down her forehead muddied with road dust, and he was looking at her calmly, softly. She had just picked a fight with him and bitten him, and he - he had saved her life.
As they sped back to the village, Kushina thought she would make him a bracelet out of her hair if he liked it so much.
* * *
“You’re the only one who could ever make me blush,” he tells her.
She had to admit that Minato was strikingly handsome, exceptionally brave, incredibly smart, astoundingly kind - and still greatly annoying.
Next to Kushina, with her perpetually scraped knees and her inexhaustible energy, he looked like a perfect porcelain statue. And so she launched her attacks, both physical and verbal, head-on, without a warning. She sparked arguments, she danced around him, yet always out of reach, she teased and played with him until he was forced into action, she raced him across Konoha roofs and over the Hokage Mountain, and when they tired of running and screaming, they would lie side by side under the streaming sunlight, wordless and finally perfectly matched.
“It’s epic,” Jiraiya remarked once. “It’s a love story. I should write a book about it.”
Minato and Kushina momentarily stopped arguing about whether or not a dinner at the ramen shop was to be considered an appropriate date and stared at Minato’s sensei suspiciously.
“Please don’t,” Minato drew out in a strangely resigned tone. Everybody knew what kind of writing Jiraiya did in his spare time.
Kushina blinked.
“Hey, I’d read it!” she declared all of a sudden and winked at Minato whose cheeks were slowly turning a delicate shade of pink. “I believe guys like you should come with an instruction manual.”
* * *
“You’re the only one I can confide in,” he tells her.
“I can’t do this!” Minato proclaimed one day upon coming home.
He and Kushina had just agreed to move in together, and she was in the process of storing boxes full of her (admittedly, mostly useless) possessions in the hallway of his apartment.
“Like hell you’re backing out now, buddy!” she snapped. She might have overestimated Minato after all.
He glanced at her inquiringly and shook his head resolutely, coming to realize what she’d meant.
“No, not this.” He waved around the chaos she had created in the hallway. Kushina arched her eyebrows quizzically. “The kids.” Minato sighed. “They’re freaking me out. It seemed so easy. I thought I’d just do as Jiraiya-sensei did, but now that I’m at the helm, I just… I have no idea how to-.”
Kushina laughed. “Well, what did you expect? Sure ain’t a walk in the park!”
“One of them is super-serious and always follows the rules. The other one is a klutz and a troublemaker. I can just feel how much they’ll hate each other! And the girl… She’s… I don’t know what she’s thinking. It’s like I never was a kid myself! I don’t get them.”
Kushina wound her arms around his neck and nudged his shoulder with her fist lightly. He was having a panic attack. Part of her felt pride swelling in her chest: he would never show it to anyone but her.
“You’ll do well,” she told him.
“How can you be sure?”
“You’re Namikaze Minato. You don’t fail.” And before he grew too conceited about that, she hastened to add: “And hell, if I can stand living with you, you surely can stand training three little kids!”
* * *
“You’re the one who can make me laugh,” he tells her.
It took him almost forever to get home that night. She had smashed a pretty expensive tea set and was trying to clean it up discreetly when she heard the door burst open. She jumped over the pile of china fragments and rushed out to meet him, and they ran into each other halfway. Minato’s eyes were sparkling feverishly. She couldn’t remember if she had ever seen him so excited. But then, her own heart was racing and thumping and ready to burst out of her chest.
“There’s something I have to tell you!” they cried out in unison.
Kushina held her breath for a second. Blood hammered in her ears.
“Okay, you go first,” she relented.
“No, no, ladies first.”
“Well, duh!” She smacked him on the crown playfully.
Minato was too worked up to retaliate. He took a deep breath and said:
“Okay. I’m Hokage!”
But she barely heard him because at this very instant she realized she couldn’t contain it after all and she blurted out:
“I’m pregnant!”
They stared at each other, wordlessly, and then erupted:
“Wait… what!?”
“Oh.” Kushina waved her hand dismissively. “We’re, like, having a baby. Now tell me about the Hokage thing!”
Minato blinked - and started laughing. She never told him how much she loved that strong, clear, musical sound. She hoped their kid would inherit it. Boy, she was getting sentimental.
Minato caught her in his arms and picked her up and spun around. She laughed too. He cupped her neck with his hands and kissed her. Halfway through it she felt tears clouding her eyes and she pulled away, rubbing her throat incoherently, trying to drive away the sudden squeezing pain.
She didn’t want him to see her cry.
“Darling,” she said with a feint reproach, “if you snap my windpipe while hugging me, I doubt you’ll ever get to see that baby.”
Minato chuckled. She had her back on him, and she felt rather than saw or heard him come closer and wrap his arms gently around her. She leaned back against his chest and smiled as she saw a string of red hair coiled around his wrist. The bracelet she had given him all these years ago.
* * *
“You’re the only one I can trust.” They kiss.
She wasn’t afraid to cry anymore. Everyone cried, and the only thing she regretted was not being able to get up and fight alongside her fellow shinobi, and the only thing she feared was running out of time.
Minato burst into the room and fell on his knees beside her bed. She raised her hand weakly, and their fingers mashed together. Kushina attempted to smile.
“Use it,” she murmured.
“Don’t speak.”
“You have to use it.”
He shook his head. She wanted to run her hand through his hair that was so bright it looked like the sun had come up at last, but her strength had completely abandoned her. Minato swung forth and pressed his dry lips against her fingers.
“Take my chakra,” Kushina said.
Minato winced. “I can’t. You have to live through this-.”
She chuckled. It was a coarse sound that hurt her throat as if she had swallowed a piece of sandpaper.
“You’re Namikaze Minato,” she whispered. “The Fourth Hokage. There’s nothing you can’t do.” Before he could protest, she continued urgently: “I want him to have my chakra. He’ll be a hero. He’ll need all the help we both can give. I want… I want him to know he’s never alone.” Tears trickled down her cheeks. “Even heroes need help sometimes.”
Slowly, Minato nodded. He leaned into her and kissed her forehead. As he pulled away, a few long strings of Kushina’s sweat-soaked hair stuck to his cheek, drawing a sharp red line from her to him.
“It’s a sure shot,” Kushina whispered.
And then she screamed, and somewhere in the room, at the backdrop of all the other screams, a shrill sound of a baby’s cry reached her ears, and she smiled inwardly, and then there was silence.
* * *
“Your father was the man of my dreams,” she tells her son, “but not the dream itself.”
“Then who-?”
Kushina winks. “I think I’m looking at him.”
June 10-July 9, 2010
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG
Timeline: pre-manga [SPOILERS for the current arc, 498-onwards]
Summary: The less heroic snippets of the two heroes’ life together. [Minato/Kushina]
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi. Title from Sex Never Goes Out Of Fashion by Garbage.
A/N: For once I wasn’t late writing it, but I am late posting it. XDD I wrote it before Chapter 501, but I don’t think the last segment conflicts with it. Also, this turned out more like a series of fragments, and they can be read separately and out of order, I suppose.
Dedication: Happy sliiightly belated Birthday, Magi! <333 Hope you’ll enjoy this!
IT’S A SURE SHOT, HONEY
“You’re the only one who could ever make me lose my cool,” he tells her.
Predictably, five minutes after he saved her, they fought. She could not bring herself to deal with the fact that she had been in need of saving and that he had to be the one to rescue her.
“Could have just thanked me,” Minato pointed out.
Kushina’s cheeks were burning. “Who asked you to barge in?” she snapped. “I had everything under con-.”
And she tripped over a root sticking out of the slippery soil and was a second away from sprawling on the ground when Minato shifted his weight, his movements so swift they were invisible to the naked eye, and caught her in his arms.
“Control,” she breathed stubbornly.
“I can see that.”
Puzzled and infuriated by his cool and confident demeanour, Kushina had virtually no choice but to punch him in the face. Hard. Such a pretty face was almost a pity to ruin; but then, it was too pretty for a guy. He could use a few manly scars - and who was she to deny him that?
Minato released a stifled gasp and started back. Kushina held her balance, assumed a fighting stance and lunged at him. He blocked her blows expertly, but he was unprepared for the overwhelming force of her determination. She whirled around him like a peg top, showering him with angry strikes of her clenched fists, her fiery hair whipping around her like a raging element.
Kushina jumped up and aimed to strike him with her foot. He caught her by the calf and yanked her down, but she wriggled out of his grasp and turned a somersault in the air and landed catlike on her feet, glaring daggers at her opponent. He had always been good, she would give him that.
A smirk tugged at the corners of her lips. All the better.
She leapt at him again, ready to pin him down - and there he was, seemingly open, but then he wasn’t there anymore, and Kushina blinked in surprise and felt a hand wrap around her billowing hair, immobilizing her. She yelped and almost fell backwards. Minato was holding her firmly, the thick red mass knotted around his forearm and a tiny triumphant scowl flickering on his face.
Kushina growled and jerked, ignoring a jolt of pain that went up the roots of her hair into her skin, and craned out her neck as far as she could - and plunged her teeth into Minato’s elbow.
The world stood still, apprehensive, caught in the gap between breaths.
He stared down at her in numb astonishment. She stared up at him with angry eyes, tasting the rough fabric of his sleeve in her mouth.
“You bit me,” he said quietly like it was the most atrocious thing she could do.
The grip on her hair loosened. She pulled back, spitting demonstratively, eyeing him like a predator on the alert. There was no telling what he would do now.
Minato twisted his arm carefully to examine his elbow. Kushina did her best to hurt him, but the pain of the actual bite couldn’t have been too sharp, taking into account the impediment of fabric between the skin and her teeth. Minato fingered a rent in the upper layer of his sleeve, which she had somehow been able to make. When he looked back at her, he seemed almost offended.
“You tore my windbreaker,” he said simply.
She wrinkled her nose with a strange feeling.
Minato’s lips trembled as if he were fighting back an onslaught of emotions.
A moment later, without any prior agreement, both of them burst out laughing.
Kushina collapsed on her knees. She laughed so hard that her stomach was beginning to hurt.
“All right, chili pepper,” Minato said, his voice a little breathless. He held out his hand amicably. “Let’s go home.”
For once, Kushina didn’t even consider refusing. She placed her hand into his palm and let him help her get up. He smiled widely at her and then rubbed his hurt nose. Kushina giggled, slightly perplexed.
“Sorry about that.” She winked at him. “It’s okay though, don’t worry. You still look girly.”
“Someone has to,” he replied nonchalantly. “For both of us.”
Kushina’s jaw dropped in indignation. She was ready to forget their (no doubt temporary) truce and she had already raised her fist, but then he smiled again, even wider, and she looked into his eyes and saw her reflection there. She stood before him, pouting, face as red as her hair that framed her cheeks in tousled locks and swooped down her forehead muddied with road dust, and he was looking at her calmly, softly. She had just picked a fight with him and bitten him, and he - he had saved her life.
As they sped back to the village, Kushina thought she would make him a bracelet out of her hair if he liked it so much.
* * *
“You’re the only one who could ever make me blush,” he tells her.
She had to admit that Minato was strikingly handsome, exceptionally brave, incredibly smart, astoundingly kind - and still greatly annoying.
Next to Kushina, with her perpetually scraped knees and her inexhaustible energy, he looked like a perfect porcelain statue. And so she launched her attacks, both physical and verbal, head-on, without a warning. She sparked arguments, she danced around him, yet always out of reach, she teased and played with him until he was forced into action, she raced him across Konoha roofs and over the Hokage Mountain, and when they tired of running and screaming, they would lie side by side under the streaming sunlight, wordless and finally perfectly matched.
“It’s epic,” Jiraiya remarked once. “It’s a love story. I should write a book about it.”
Minato and Kushina momentarily stopped arguing about whether or not a dinner at the ramen shop was to be considered an appropriate date and stared at Minato’s sensei suspiciously.
“Please don’t,” Minato drew out in a strangely resigned tone. Everybody knew what kind of writing Jiraiya did in his spare time.
Kushina blinked.
“Hey, I’d read it!” she declared all of a sudden and winked at Minato whose cheeks were slowly turning a delicate shade of pink. “I believe guys like you should come with an instruction manual.”
* * *
“You’re the only one I can confide in,” he tells her.
“I can’t do this!” Minato proclaimed one day upon coming home.
He and Kushina had just agreed to move in together, and she was in the process of storing boxes full of her (admittedly, mostly useless) possessions in the hallway of his apartment.
“Like hell you’re backing out now, buddy!” she snapped. She might have overestimated Minato after all.
He glanced at her inquiringly and shook his head resolutely, coming to realize what she’d meant.
“No, not this.” He waved around the chaos she had created in the hallway. Kushina arched her eyebrows quizzically. “The kids.” Minato sighed. “They’re freaking me out. It seemed so easy. I thought I’d just do as Jiraiya-sensei did, but now that I’m at the helm, I just… I have no idea how to-.”
Kushina laughed. “Well, what did you expect? Sure ain’t a walk in the park!”
“One of them is super-serious and always follows the rules. The other one is a klutz and a troublemaker. I can just feel how much they’ll hate each other! And the girl… She’s… I don’t know what she’s thinking. It’s like I never was a kid myself! I don’t get them.”
Kushina wound her arms around his neck and nudged his shoulder with her fist lightly. He was having a panic attack. Part of her felt pride swelling in her chest: he would never show it to anyone but her.
“You’ll do well,” she told him.
“How can you be sure?”
“You’re Namikaze Minato. You don’t fail.” And before he grew too conceited about that, she hastened to add: “And hell, if I can stand living with you, you surely can stand training three little kids!”
* * *
“You’re the one who can make me laugh,” he tells her.
It took him almost forever to get home that night. She had smashed a pretty expensive tea set and was trying to clean it up discreetly when she heard the door burst open. She jumped over the pile of china fragments and rushed out to meet him, and they ran into each other halfway. Minato’s eyes were sparkling feverishly. She couldn’t remember if she had ever seen him so excited. But then, her own heart was racing and thumping and ready to burst out of her chest.
“There’s something I have to tell you!” they cried out in unison.
Kushina held her breath for a second. Blood hammered in her ears.
“Okay, you go first,” she relented.
“No, no, ladies first.”
“Well, duh!” She smacked him on the crown playfully.
Minato was too worked up to retaliate. He took a deep breath and said:
“Okay. I’m Hokage!”
But she barely heard him because at this very instant she realized she couldn’t contain it after all and she blurted out:
“I’m pregnant!”
They stared at each other, wordlessly, and then erupted:
“Wait… what!?”
“Oh.” Kushina waved her hand dismissively. “We’re, like, having a baby. Now tell me about the Hokage thing!”
Minato blinked - and started laughing. She never told him how much she loved that strong, clear, musical sound. She hoped their kid would inherit it. Boy, she was getting sentimental.
Minato caught her in his arms and picked her up and spun around. She laughed too. He cupped her neck with his hands and kissed her. Halfway through it she felt tears clouding her eyes and she pulled away, rubbing her throat incoherently, trying to drive away the sudden squeezing pain.
She didn’t want him to see her cry.
“Darling,” she said with a feint reproach, “if you snap my windpipe while hugging me, I doubt you’ll ever get to see that baby.”
Minato chuckled. She had her back on him, and she felt rather than saw or heard him come closer and wrap his arms gently around her. She leaned back against his chest and smiled as she saw a string of red hair coiled around his wrist. The bracelet she had given him all these years ago.
* * *
“You’re the only one I can trust.” They kiss.
She wasn’t afraid to cry anymore. Everyone cried, and the only thing she regretted was not being able to get up and fight alongside her fellow shinobi, and the only thing she feared was running out of time.
Minato burst into the room and fell on his knees beside her bed. She raised her hand weakly, and their fingers mashed together. Kushina attempted to smile.
“Use it,” she murmured.
“Don’t speak.”
“You have to use it.”
He shook his head. She wanted to run her hand through his hair that was so bright it looked like the sun had come up at last, but her strength had completely abandoned her. Minato swung forth and pressed his dry lips against her fingers.
“Take my chakra,” Kushina said.
Minato winced. “I can’t. You have to live through this-.”
She chuckled. It was a coarse sound that hurt her throat as if she had swallowed a piece of sandpaper.
“You’re Namikaze Minato,” she whispered. “The Fourth Hokage. There’s nothing you can’t do.” Before he could protest, she continued urgently: “I want him to have my chakra. He’ll be a hero. He’ll need all the help we both can give. I want… I want him to know he’s never alone.” Tears trickled down her cheeks. “Even heroes need help sometimes.”
Slowly, Minato nodded. He leaned into her and kissed her forehead. As he pulled away, a few long strings of Kushina’s sweat-soaked hair stuck to his cheek, drawing a sharp red line from her to him.
“It’s a sure shot,” Kushina whispered.
And then she screamed, and somewhere in the room, at the backdrop of all the other screams, a shrill sound of a baby’s cry reached her ears, and she smiled inwardly, and then there was silence.
* * *
“Your father was the man of my dreams,” she tells her son, “but not the dream itself.”
“Then who-?”
Kushina winks. “I think I’m looking at him.”
June 10-July 9, 2010