Work Text:
"Careful," Iruka-sensei said as Naruto stuffed piping hot ramen into his mouth and immediately made pained sounds as it burned. "Your poor soulmate won't have any taste buds left by the time you meet."
"Soulmate?" Naruto asked.
Iruka-sensei got that confused look on his face, the one when people said silly things, and then he looked sad. He looked sad at a lot of Naruto's questions, and that always made Naruto sad because Iruka-sensei was the only person who was actually nice to him. He was scared that one day he'd make Iruka-sensei so sad that he wouldn't want to spend time with Naruto anymore, but he thought that if he told Iruka-sensei that he'd get extra sad. So he kept that fear tucked into the space in his chest where he tucked all the other things he was scared of.
"Soulmates are someone the universe picks out for us as a very special person in our lives," Iruka-sensei explained. "Sometimes they're someone we like romantically,-" he laughed when Naruto stuck out his tongue at the thought, "sometimes they become like family, and sometimes they're our best friend. Sometimes, they're different things to us at different times; but no matter what, they're out there for us to make sure we're never lonely."
Naruto liked that thought. He spent most of his time alone, so knowing there was someone who would be there for him was really nice. Maybe they would like ramen and think plants were really cool, and Naruto could show them all the best places to hide when it rained or when people were extra mean.
"Who's my soulmate?" Naruto stood up and practically jumped into Iruka-sensei's lap. "I wanna meet 'em. Now."
Iruka-sensei laughed, but it wasn't mean like a lot of people's were. It was kind of soft, like a blanket. Naruto liked making Iruka-sensei laugh.
"We don't know at first. But we can feel their pain, and that's how you can tell. When you meet the person who knows all your hurts, and they know yours, you know you've met your soulmate."
"That's stupid," Naruto pouted. "I don't want my person to hurt because I get hurt. That doesn't seem fair."
Iruka-sensei hummed. "Maybe it's a way of trying to keep ourselves healthy and safe, so our soulmate doesn't suffer as much."
Naruto thought about that. He definitely needed to not slam into things as often, and maybe let his ramen cool down more before eating it.
"Have you met your soulmate, Iruka-sensei?"
"Not yet, Naruto-kun," he said, shaking his head. "But that's okay. I think my soulmate leads a pretty dangerous life, so I'm happy waiting until they're ready to settle down."
"I bet they're a super awesome shinobi." Naruto nodded. That felt right. "One who does all sorts of cool things, and won't run away when you get scary."
"I get scary?"
"Yeah! Like when you took me to your work and saw a paper with little doodles on it on your desk?"
Iruka-sensei laughed again. "Okay, yes. I guess I can get scary when someone doesn't write a good mission report."
Naruto giggled, and then very carefully took a bite of his ramen. Finding it cool enough, he began to devour the rest of it with his usual enthusiasm.
"Hey, Iruka-sensei," Naruto asked, after the bowl was mostly empty. "Can you feel all your person's hurts? Like…when they're really sad? Or lonely?" He said the last part really softly, hoping that maybe it wouldn't make Iruka-sensei sad if it wasn't said too loud.
It didn't work. Iruka-sensei looked really sad, but also thoughtful.
"Yes," he said after a moment. "When your soulmate feels an emotional hurt that's really strong, you feel it too."
"Oh."
Naruto thought about the low, constant ache in his chest, the one that felt so familiar to his own sadness. He thought about the way it sometimes felt like an anger that echoed in the deepest parts of him.
"I hope I meet my person soon," he said. "That way neither of us have to be lonely anymore."
Iruka-sensei had pulled him into a big hug then, and told him that he hoped so too.
Later, when the nights were especially hard and long and he could feel his soulmate's ache in his chest and knew his soulmate must feel his as well, he would pinch his cheek just hard enough to hurt. He wanted to remind his soulmate that they weren't alone. That wherever, whoever, they were, Naruto knew they were hurting, and would be there to help make it better. Someday.
—
Naruto was there when Iruka-sensei figured out who his soulmate was, even though they'd met a lot before. It was after the ordeal with Haku and Zabuza, and he'd managed to convince Iruka-sensei to come with Team 7 for victory ramen. He was telling the story (Sakura told him he was shouting, but did she have a bridge named after her? No.) with occasional interruptions from his team, when he got to the second fight between Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza. Iruka-sensei already had a funny look on his face, the sort of horrified and impressed one he had a lot around Naruto with an extra something added in, but when Naruto described the slash that Kakashi-sensei received Iruka-sensei's face paled.
He spun around towards Kakashi-sensei.
"You," he hissed, eyes narrowed.
"Me?" Kakashi-sensei looked confused. It was pretty funny.
"You write the worst reports out of any shinobi I've ever met." Iruka-sensei sounded genuinely offended. "You terrorize my students. You get injured all the time."
Kakashi-sensei still looked confused, as did Sakura and Sasuke. They were pretty slow on the uptake, Naruto decided.
"Ah, no way, Iruka-sensei," he groaned. "It was supposed to be a super cool shinobi, not a lazy pervert like Kakashi-sensei."
Iruka-sensei turned back at him and flashed a quick grin, before turning back to the other three.
"Hey! I'll have you know-" Kakashi-sensei started, but he stopped very quickly when Naruto reached over and poked Iruka-sensei in the cheek, just hard enough to hurt.
Kakashi-sensei blinked, and he looked more than a little dazed. "Oh."
"Yeah," Iruka-sensei said, his eyes narrowed. "Oh."
"I'm sorry? For the…"
"The slash to the arm? The multiple times you got stabbed in the chest? The whole thing with your eye? I was out for a week thanks to whatever that was!"
Naruto didn't know it was possible for Kakashi-sensei to look meek. This was incredible.
"I'll make it up to you? Starring with dinner tomorrow night? Just the two of us."
"It's a start," Iruka-sensei agreed, and then finally his face softened, and he gave Kakashi-sensei one of those really good smiles. "It's nice to finally put a face to all these years of anxiety."
"Don't worry, Iruka-sensei," Naruto said, interrupting whatever gross thing Kakashi-sensei was probably about to say. "I'll keep him safe for you."
Iruka-sensei turned that smile toward Naruto and ruffled his hair fondly. "I know you will, Naruto-kun."
There was grumbling from Kakashi-sensei, but he seemed happy. Sasuke and Sakura looked like they'd finally caught on, given that he was poking at his food looking bored and she was practically swooning.
It was sort of annoying having Iruka-sensei and Kakashi-sensei giving each other weird looks the rest of the night, but Naruto couldn't feel too upset about it. Especially not when they showed up at his apartment two days later and made him dinner. They said it was a "thank you" for helping them find each other. All Naruto cared about was they both looked happy, though the food and company was pretty great too.
That night, he focused on the deep sadness and rage in his chest, the one that hadn't ever abated, and he let himself feel the full weight of his own loneliness.
"I hope we meet soon," he said as he pinched his cheek. "You deserve to be happy too."
—
The Chunin examines were nothing like what Naruto had expected. Mostly because they sucked. A lot.
He'd expected them to be hard. A written test? Undesirable, by expected. Worse than imagined, but they got through it. Forest of Death? Was pretty awful even before the weird snake dude attacked Sasuke.
Naruto was pretty certain that wasn't part of the Chunin exam, but being a good shinobi meant adapting to unexpected, often worsening conditions.
It's not like he thought being a shinobi was glamorous. He'd seen groups drag themselves back through the gates, exhausted and covered in dirt and blood, clothing torn and with hollow looks on their eyes.
He knew some groups came back smaller than they left, or not at all.
Still, this seemed a bit excessive.
Maybe it was all the people trying to kill them.
But they made it, and Iruka-sensei was there when they did. It felt good to see him. He looked so proud, and making Iruka-sensei proud was one of Naruto's favorite things to do.
The first set of one on one fights were harrowing. There were a lot of emotions: triumphs when his friends won, terror when they came close to dying.
Seriously, what the fuck was wrong with Neji? Hinata was so nice!
Then there was the fight between Lee and Gaara, and Naruto wasn't sure he'd ever felt so many conflicting emotions in his life. Lee was way cooler than Naruto had originally given him credit for, and he kind of really respected his commitment. Watching Lee give it his all made Naruto want to get better, stronger, fight harder than ever before. He also hoped Lee's soulmate had a very high pain tolerance.
Because Gaara was fucking terrifying.
It wasn't just the fact that Lee never even landed a direct hit to Gaara, just his sand, despite the fact that Lee was super talented. Or how perfect Gaara's attacks and defense were, without a weakness in sight.
What made Gaara so scary was his eyes. They only seems to express the negative emotions, like anger, fear.
Bloodlust. Killing intent.
He could feel it in his bones. He could feel it in his heart. He could feel it in that dark part of him that housed a monster, until it was indistinguishable from his own, and that scared him more than anything else.
Of course Naruto was angry on behalf of Lee. He hadn't deserved being hurt that way, to have his future possibly taken away.
But he couldn't help but wonder how someone turned into something like that. Despite his own circumstances, what people had called him and the way he'd been treated, he didn't think anyone was truly born a monster.
Then Gaara came to the hospital, and he learned.
They were so alike it hurt, and hearing what Gaara had gone through…it didn't forgive what he'd done, the way he acted, but it explained a lot. Naruto had suffered loneliness and the hatred of the village, but no one had ever betrayed him like that. Not until Mizuki, and by then Naruto had a person to protect, a reason not to succumb to the darkest part of his anger.
Who would he have become if the person who was supposed to care for him tried to kill him, day after day?
It scared him more than a little, how easy it was to empathize with the guy who wanted to kill his friends, would kill him without a second thought.
(Maybe, he would think to himself, maybe there was a way to save him.)
Naruto thought of this a lot in the remaining day before the final part of the Chunin exams, but he put it completely from his mind when the time came to take on Neji. He had a lot to win for, there, not just for himself but for Lee and Hinata and everyone who had been told it was their destiny to lose. (If that included people who've never known a life beyond being a monster, well. That was just a byproduct of his determination.)
Afterward, he saw Gaara again, and it was one thing to feel that killing intent and another to see it happen. Gaara's chilling indifference felt a lot like hate, to Naruto, but it didn't matter when the force of it left him frozen.
He was grateful Shikamaru was there, had been there both times. Shikamaru was brilliant, and he was never as cruel to Naruto as the others. It was a comfort knowing there was someone else to rely on, another eyewitness to the terror.
Not that they could convince Kakashi-sensei to stop the fight. He got told in no uncertain terms to shut up and watch, which hurt more than he cared to admit. Kakashi-sensei got like that sometimes, and Naruto idly wondered how much of that treatment he could have handled as a child before turning into something so much worse than a hyperactive prankster.
Sasuke's fight against Gaara was perhaps the most tense Naruto had ever been, even more than Gaara's fight against Lee. He was so engrossed that he didn't even register the slight pain on his cheek, the one that felt like a cut, until much later.
Then things got somehow, remarkably, even worse.
Naruto trusted Kakashi-sensei and Gai-sensei, and it wasn't like he wouldn't go running after Sasuke and Gaara anyway. He really hated leaving Shikamaru behind to deal with the ambush, but he knew they had to. When he felt intense pain in his arm, he hoped that whoever his soulmate was, they were getting somewhere safe.
He didn't expect, in that moment, how close they really were.
Catching up Gaara meant he had to focus entirely on the new situation. Saving his friends from Gaara was the clear priority, but, damn it, he wanted to save Gaara from himself too. It was those eyes again, inhuman and burning with a madness that would consume everything if left unchecked. It was an anger that hungered and Naruto felt it pulse in his chest.
(The part of his soul he tried so hard to bury knew that hunger. He tried to ignore it, but couldn't quite succeed.)
He had to prioritize: keep Sakura alive. Keep Sasuke from dying. Stop Gaara from going insane and rampaging toward the village. Don't die in the process.
Simple. Not terrifying at all. Absolutely no pressure.
One of the things they taught in the Academy but couldn't be truly learned until it happened was how fast things happened in a fight. You couldn't let the enemy catch their breath, the enemy couldn't let you catch yours. Understanding what you were capable of was something you had to know instinctively, and you had to make choices and stick to them without hesitation.
Good thing Naruto wasn't much for hesitation to begin with.
The vague aches he began to feel he ignored, couldn't spare the energy to apologize to his soulmate and hope they were okay.
Learning Gaara didn't sleep due to fear of the thing that lived within him explained a lot, actually. All the most brilliant shinobi Naruto knew loved to nap, so he had to assume sleep was a pretty important part of staying sane. He loved sleeping in, so clearly this was a concept that carried some weight.
But Gaara had been carrying that fear, that exhaustion, every day. And every day someone tried to kill him, told him he was worthless.
Transforming into the monster in his heart, the giant nine tailed fox, when Gamabunta asked for him a henge felt absurdly right, and he felt a sort of strange approval from inside when he assumed the form. Being the fox while facing the giant sand tanuki also made it feel like something in the universe aligned, like showing each other these forms was cosmically correct.
Certainly a lot to think on. Later. Not when everyone was still in danger.
Naruto's entire world turned on its head when he landed that first punch on Gaara.
And felt it on his own face.
A number of very specific words learned from a lifetime living on the streets of Konaha ran across his mind. He wanted to stop, take this information in, examine why it didn't actually feel surprising at all. Except Gaara was still asleep and there was a raging sand monster in front of him, so there wasn't a lot of time to process the fact that his soulmate was a mad-eyed killer with more trauma than even Naruto could imagine.
Which was saying a lot, really.
A potentially deadly fight wasn't exactly the way Naruto had imagined finding his soulmate, but it would make a really badass story one day. Assuming everyone lived.
More determined than ever to save Gaara, Naruto steeled himself for the pain that was to follow. Because he nothing could happen if Gaara refused to wake up, and Naruto's options were limited.
The headbutt was solid, and Naruto was proud of how much his face hurt as it landed. The extra punch as they fell of their respective giants to ensure Gaara was really down for the count sucked, but Naruto would put up with that and more to get this all to stop.
Downside: when he landed on the forest floor his body was desperately unresponsive. Where his own pain ended and Gaara's pain began was impossible to determine, both of them so drained from the fight. But his soulmate was right there, and Naruto wasn't going to stop moving until the bastard acknowledged it.
Even if he had to crawl his way over by his chin because his limbs weren't listening to him.
Gaara looked at him with apprehensive horror, and Naruto wondered if he knew. He had to, right? It's not like Naruto hadn't been injured in front of him numerous times.
Still. Gaara had a lot going on. Who knows what was happening in his head.
Naruto eventually made it over to Gaara, and whatever he expected Naruto to do it clearly wasn't gathering the last of his strength to flop half on top of him, curled up against his side.
With a wide grin and no small amount of trepidation, Naruto stared Gaara down and pinched his own cheek. Just like he used to.
Gaara continued to stare for a moment.
(Naruto was glad they were soulmates. It made thinking about how pretty Gaara's eyes were when they weren't full of killing intent a lot less awkward.)
"You aren't real," Gaara eventually said, voice barely a whisper.
"I'm totally real!" Naruto scrunched his nose up at him. "I'm real, and I'm your soulmate."
"I can't have a soulmate." Gaara sounded faint. "They told me I couldn't have a soulmate because I'm a monster, and monster's don't have souls."
Naruto frowned. "I don't know who 'they' are, but I'm gonna punch them. Besides, if we're not soulmates, how come you feel my pain?"
Gaara shook his head. "I don't. Didn't. Mother…stopped it. Said I didn't need the distraction. But I used to. And I can again, now."
Not that Naruto wasn't resentful about having a giant murder fox housed inside him, but at least he could be grateful it never blocked the pain his soulmate shared with him.
"Well. We're soulmates. And I'm going to make sure you're never lonely again," Naruto promised. "And we'll work on the whole sleeping thing. And the whole murdering the entire world to prove you deserve to live thing, that's really messed up. Also untrue. You deserve to live no matter what."
The muscles in Gaara's face were doing something weird, like they weren't sure how to make an expression that wasn't murderous or blank.
"Why help me? After everything?"
"Because even if you weren't my soulmate, you deserve better than what's happened to you," Naruto said, though the world was getting gray around the edges at an worryingly quick pace. "No matter what, we're going to be friends. I understand…"
He wanted to explain, in detail, all the things he understood about Gaara, but his mouth seemed to be in agreement with the rest of his body to not respond to Naruto's instructions. At least Gaara was staring at him with those pretty green eyes, though people were shouting in the distance and that was never a good sign.
Just in case, he tried to curl around Gaara a little more, and then there was nothing but warmth and darkness.
—
Naruto's mind woke up before his body did, which wasn't too unusual.
What was unusual was the body wrapped around his, arms circling him but not too tight. Hesitant, almost. Naruto wished the arms would hold him a little tighter. They were nice, and he knew he was safe here.
(His evil murder fox was content too, perhaps for the first time ever.)
Then the voices filtered in.
"How did you even move them here?" That would be Kakashi-sensei. He sounded really tired.
"Very carefully." Naruto wasn't sure, but he thought that was Asuma-sensei.
"And you haven't been able to separate them?"
"I invite you to try."
The arms around Naruto finally tightened at that. Naruto found he could move enough to lean in closer, hopefully encouraging more firm holds. Maybe Gaara would scratch his scalp, he loved having his scalp-
Oh! The arms were Gaara's. He must have come around to the idea of them being soulmates, if he was holding Naruto like this. That was awesome, and Naruto wiggled a bit in happiness.
He thought Gaara might have made a noise that.
Naruto slowly opened one eye, just to get an idea of what was going on. The first thing he saw was Gaara's chest, which was…nice. If he looked up a bit he could see Gaara's face, who was looking down at Naruto. He looked sort of bewildered, which was actually super adorable on his normally scary face. When Gaara wasn't in a murderous rage, he was…well, he was pretty, prettier even than Sakura. (Or even Sasuke, who Naruto would never admit on pain of death as being pretty, even though he totally was.)
But Gaara was way, way prettier than anyone else in all of Konoha, scary or not. Naruto was sure he'd be truly beautiful when he grew up.
He sighed happily, smiling up at Gaara, who…tried to smile, and it mostly failed, but even the attempt so soon after trying to kill each other was a great sign.
There was more talking happening while Naruto was distracted. He opened his eyes more and took a look around to get his bearings.
They were in the hospital. He and Gaara were probably in the hospital bed, judging by the uncomfortable mattress and the overwhelming scent of cleaning supplies. His back was to the wall, with Gaara between him and the rest of the room.
The rest of the room, which was filled with Konoha jōnin, one visible member of Anbu (which meant there were at least two more nearby, per his experience), and Iruka-sensei (who was scarier than any jōnin or Anbu combined, no matter his status). All of them look liked they'd been fighting, and all of them were some combination of worried or sad. Except for Iruka-sensei, who just looked really tired and was trying not to make it obvious how much he was leaning on Kakashi-sensei, but was smiling over at Naruto and Gaara. He was the first one who noticed Naruto was awake, and his smile widened.
Naruto smiled back, feeling his spirits lift a bit more. Realistically speaking, Naruto knew there would be issues having Gaara as soulmate given everything that happened. Even just thinking about how Lee would react hurt, and Naruto didn't even know if Shikamaru or Sakura had survived.
But he'd waited so long, and having it be Gaara felt so right, down to his marrow.
There were a lot of conflicting emotions to deal with, being awake. Maybe he could just go back to sleep.
Ah, nope. Kakashi-sensei had seen him, and was now giving him one of those eye smiles which was one hundred percent a lie to hide how much he wanted to throttle someone. Naruto knew the smile, and the lie, very well, and he frowned at bit at it.
Iruka-sensei elbowed him in the side, lightly.
Naruto really loved Iruka-sensei.
Kakashi-sensei dropped the act and sighed. "Care to explain to us what's going on, Naruto?"
Everyone else's conversations stopped, and the full weight of every single, very powerful, shinobi in the room focused on Naruto.
He did not like this, and he gripped on to Gaara's shirt, curling a bit to make himself small. Gaara scowled, and then there was a dome of sand shielding them from the outside world.
"I won't let them hurt you either," Gaara whispered.
Naruto thought it was weird that he suddenly felt like crying, and that was almost guaranteed to be taken the wrong way by Gaara. So he threw his arms around Gaara instead and tucked his face into his neck.
"Thank you."
One of Gaara's hands began rubbing his back. Hesitantly at first, but then more confident the longer he was allowed to do it. Naruto thought that maybe Gaara liked doing things like this, but didn't know how. Which was really sad, but Naruto got it. They'd learn together.
There was the mummer of conversation outside the sand dome, and then Iruka-sensei's voice silenced everyone.
"How. How do you call yourself geniuses when you can't even figure out what's going on?"
He was using his disappointed teacher voice. Naruto felt a pang of sympathy for everyone else in the room, since his dissapointed teacher voice was the stuff of legends. No one could stand tall in the face of it.
Naruto tapped Gaara's arm, and because he was super smart in addition to being super pretty, he got what Naruto was asking. The sand dome lowered, and Naruto again peeked over Gaara to look at Iruka-sensei.
"And what, pray tell, is going on?" That was from the Anbu. Naruto would want to keep his identity hidden too, if Iruka-sensei was staring at him like that.
Iruka-sensei looked to Naruto and smiled. "They're soulmates, obviously."
There was a moment of silence, and Naruto could feel the oncoming rush of conversation like a storm about to break. He winced, but was prepared to take it, if nothing else to help protect Gaara as much as possible.
But Kakashi-sensei saved the day by raising his hand, halting conversation before it started.
"Naruto-kun, Gaara…-sama?" He seemed unsure of how to refer to Gaara, but he got points for trying. "Is this true?"
Naruto pushed himself half up and over Gaara, staring down everyone in the room.
"Yes! Gaara is my soulmate, and he's had a really bad life, I don't even know how bad, but it was even worse than mine and I'm gonna find out who hurt him so much and punch them, and we've both been lonely and angry for so long and you can't make him go away or hurt him because it's not his fault, it's not, and I'm going to make sure he's never sad or lonely ever again and if you try to hurt him I'll-"
It's a good thing Kakashi-sensei interrupted at that point, because he wasn't sure what he would do, but he's pretty certain that whatever it was would probably count as treason.
"While I cannot say what's going to happen, but I'm sure we can agree that given the recent circumstances, and this new information, no one will be trying to make him leave your side or cause him pain."
Gaara was looking up at him with something like wonder. It made Naruto feel all warm inside.
"Well…good." Naruto settled back within the circle of Gaara's arms. It turned out he was still really tired, and all the stress had taken a lot out of him. Falling back asleep sounded like a great idea.
A thought occurred to him before he could get pulled fully under.
"Wait! Shikamaru-kun! And Sakura-chan and Sasuke-kun! Are they okay?"
Kakashi-sensei gave him the first real eye smile of the day. "Maa, all alive. They're resting now, though Gaara-sama's siblings would like to see him, and your teammates have been asking about you."
"I'm glad," Naruto said, yawning, and then Gaara was putting a hand on his shoulder to get him to lay down and press in close. Even if he'd had the energy, Naruto had zero inclination to fight it.
"Kakashi-san," Gaara said, voice quiet and oddly measured. "Will you tell Kankurō and Temari that I am fine and will talk to them soon?"
If Kakashi-sensei was surprised, he didn't show it.
"Of course. Now, I believe there is much to discuss-"
It sounded like people were leaving. Naruto opened one eye and saw Iruka-sensei smiling at him again.
"Rest well, Naruto," he said. "And, to both of you, congratulations."
Naruto nodded, too tired to do much else, and settled back into position against Gaara.
"When I wake up," he mumbled, hoping he was coherent. "I'm gonna take you to Ichiraku. Then I'll show you my plants, and the best way to get on top of the monuments…"
Someone was covering them with a blanket, and Gaara was wrapping it around them.
"I would like that," he said, quiet but sure.
As Naruto fell asleep, he realized that, for the first time in his life, his chest didn't ache.
Neither of them were lonely anymore.
True to Naruto's word, neither of them would be lonely again.