It begins

Chapter 2 –
In the early morning

“Naruto, wake up.”
Kakashi gave the sleeping figure of Naruto a gentle push in the back. His warm hands gave the young boy a tingling sensation. Did he really want to get up? He’d been replaying the vision of Kakashi leaning down to kiss him goodnight over and over again, each time hoping that the story would evolve.
“I’ll only tell you once more, Naruto,” Kakashi warned. “Get up or you probably won’t live to regret it.”
Naruto shifted beneath the soft, white sheets. The bed was so warm and comfortable. He just wanted a few more minutes. But he felt his teacher’s stern look piercing into his back, so he decided to oblige for now. This bed wasn’t going anywhere.
“Fine, fine,” Naruto complained, rising to a sitting position. “I’m up.”
Kakashi’s scolding gaze turned mild and friendly again, and Naruto recognized a small smile beneath his mask, which unfortunately had been put back on.
“Can’t you drop the mask?” Naruto wondered aloud. Kakashi took some time to reflect upon this.
“I suppose I could…” he finally replied, seeming very satisfied with his answer. “But I like it this way. It’s a look, you see?”
Naruto sighed. Although he had always thought Kakashi to be quite the handsome man, he was just miserable about it now that he’d seen his entire face. He desperately wanted to lose himself in his perfect features and gorgeous symmetry.
“No, I don’t,” Naruto said, determined to act stubborn. “I want to see your face!”
“But you’ve already seen it,” Kakashi casually remarked.
Naruto let out a frustrated sigh.
“But I want to see it again! I want to see it all the time!”
“Why?” Kakashi asked. It was such a simple question, but it completely shook Naruto. How was he supposed to answer to that? What could he say that would not make him look like a complete idiot? So instead of answering, Naruto responded with a submissive silence.
After Naruto had dressed, Kakashi led him down into the reception.
“Hello,” he greeted the receptionist, a pretty lady with blonde hair and blue eyes. “Is there anywhere nearby where my student and I can train undisturbed?”
The woman seemed spellbound for a few seconds before answering.
“Yeah, sure! We get that a lot. Just go out back and follow the forest trail some ten minutes. Then you’ll find a large clearing in between the trees. Our shinobi guests often use the area to train in.”
“Great,” Kakashi smiled. “Thanks a lot!”
The woman smiled broadly back, flattered by his presence. Naruto grew irritated.
“Yeah, thanks,” he mumbled, not able to cut Kakashi loose from her gaze.
Well outside and walking down the forest trail, Naruto grew impatient. He had been waiting for some explanation- or at the very least an acknowledgement- of yesterday’s events. Instead, Kakashi acted as he always did, being mysterious, silent and… Kakashi. It was really pissing Naruto off. He had been so happy yesterday, and now his teacher couldn’t just ignore him.
“Kakashi-sensei,” Naruto said, quickening his pace to catch up with Kakashi, who was walking some three feet ahead of him. “I want to talk…“
“I know,” Kakashi interrupted. Naruto waited for him to continue, but it never happened. A few minutes later the two of them were standing in the outskirts of the forest clearing the woman had spoken of. Their training-arena. All thoughts Naruto had about yesterday vanished, and an extreme excitement took over. He was finally going to learn some new moves! It seemed like forever since the last time he had a real training-session. He wasn’t going to let a fraction of a kiss destroy these precious hours.
“Alright!” He exclaimed, doing a little leap. “Let’s get started!”
Kakashi gave a small laugh, recognizing Naruto’s fighting spirit.
“Fine,” he said. Naruto was immediately at his side to get instructions, like a dog. “I’ve given it some thought, and decided that I will teach you a special technique called Timestop no Jutsu. Although the name suggest a delay of time, its real function is to immobilize a foe by torpedoing chakra into the air around them to stop, and thereby paralyzing your enemy. Pay careful attention as I demonstrate,” Kakashi declared, picking down an apple from the nearest tree and tossing it high up in the air. He performed a combination of four handseals towards the soaring apple and exclaimed “Timestop no Jutsu!” loudly. The apple froze dead in its tracks, high up in mid-air, held in place by a gesture of Kakashi’s hand.
Naruto watched in awe at the unmoving apple some two meters above them.
“Awesome!” He shouted with enthusiasm. “That’s amazing, Kakashi-sensei!”
Kakashi smiled and clenched his fist, thus making the apple fall down. It hit the ground with a silenced thump.
“Now you’ve seen me do it. I’ll explain to you more accurately how it’s done. Step 1: keep your eyes locked on the target at all time and perform the four handseals I just showed you. Step 2: gather an amount of chakra equivalent to the target’s size in your fingertips. Step 3: projectile the chakra speedily and with lots of force at the target. If done correctly, the chakra will wrap itself around the object and freeze the surrounding air. Step 4: concentrate on maintaining the connection between your hand and the target. If you screw up the pathway to the target, the technique will be broken. In this point lies the jutsu’s weakness: nothing must come between you and the target, lest the chakra connection is severed. Do you understand?”
Naruto slowly nodded. Yes, he had understood. Piece of cake.
“Sure. Now, let me try!” he exclaimed. Kakashi laughed and said that he’d be sitting under that tree over there if he needed help. But Naruto was positive he wouldn’t. He’d worked on maintaining his chakra flow before, when Jiraya was teaching him the Rasengan, which most likely was a much harder technique to master. He was sure he’d pull it off on the first go. How hard could it be?
As the results of a whole hour of training showed: very hard indeed. Naruto hadn’t even come close to freezing his apple. After what must have been his hundred try, Naruto broke down and frantically kept shouting and ranting “What the hell am I doing wrong?!”
Kakashi took pity on him and got up to help him.
“Don’t underestimate a challenge, Naruto. Before you started, you were so sure you were going to master it at once that you didn’t even stop to think. If you analyze, you will see that while you manage step 1 and 2 fairly easy, due to the Rasengan training with Jiraya, it’s at step 3 that you fail. Your chakra isn’t being shot onto the apple fast enough, so you miss it. It’s like a turtle trying to headbutt a train,” Kakashi explained. Naruto felt agitated by being compared to a turtle.
“Well,” he uttered. “How am I supposed to projectile my chakra faster? I’ve never done anything like it before!”
“Okay, look here,” Kakashi said, picking up a discarded apple from the ground, holding it in his fingertips. “Now do the technique.”
Naruto did as he was told. He kept his eyes fixed on the apple, performed the handseals, gathered chakra in his fingertips and sent it towards the apple. It made contact, and Naruto shifted his attention to maintaining the steady flow of chakra from his outstretched fingers.
Kakashi let go of the apple. It was stuck in mid-air. Naruto was so exited that he bolted about, cheering. The apple fell to the ground. But it didn’t matter. Naruto had successfully frozen it!
“YEAH! Perfect!” he shouted, grinning at the apple. Kakashi seemed pleased too.
“That’s great, Naruto. You’ve learned the basics. But remember, had the apple been moving, you wouldn’t have been able to hit it with your chakra. You have to practice shooting chakra from your fingertips at greater speed, or the technique won’t work,” he warned.
“Yeah, yeah! Sure, Kakashi-sensei!” Naruto pledged, still exited about his achievement.

As they walked back towards the inn, Naruto remembered something.
“Kakashi-sensei?” he asked, stopping. “I need to talk with you.”
Naruto felt shy and uncertain, afraid to embarrass himself again. But he had to ask.
“I see,” Kakashi sighed. “About yesterday, I suppose?”
Naruto nodded carefully and ushered a dry yes.
“Why did you kiss me?”
Kakashi smiled beneath his mask. “It felt like the right thing to do at the moment.”
Naruto was amazed by the simplicity of his answer, but also very glad. He remembered the events in their room the evening before like it happened only a few minutes ago. Kakashi stripping down, catching Naruto checking him out, being so extremely kind, telling him not to worry about it, taking off his mask and unveiling his gorgeous face, giving Naruto a small but significant kiss on the lips, falling asleep inches away from each other.
Naruto dreamily relived all of this.
He realized that Kakashi had moved closer to him. He was standing only two feet away, looking deep into his student’s eyes. He had pulled down his mask, revealing his perfect face.
Naruto swallowed hard. His heart was pounding inside his chest, begging to go join it’s soulmate a mere half a meter away.
“What do you feel is the right thing to do now, sensei?” he stuttered. Kakashi smiled.
The tall, handsome figure of Naruto’s teacher bent down and placed a warm kiss on his student’s lips. Naruto gently kissed him back, savoring the sensation of his mentor’s lips on his own. What in reality was only a few seconds seemed to last a lifetime, and it was the most fulfilled one Naruto had ever known. He was so sad when Kakashi inevitably withdrew.
Naruto looked up into Kakashi’s face and met a pair of warm, loving eyes that were willing to bring him to the brink of unearthly pleasure if only he was allowed to.
“Do you know that I love you?” Kakashi said in the most sweetest of voices.
“Yes,” Naruto said. “And will you let me be with you?”
Kakashi looked at the boy before him.
“Yes, but not yet. Not in the way you want to, though it is unimaginable that anyone could want that more than me, because ever particle of my flesh longs to be on you, in you and with you,” Kakashi declared, firmly grasping Naruto’s shoulders inn his large, adult hands.
“But you’re only twelve,” he sighed. “You need to be ready. I’ll show you how, but not today. Don’t hurry. There is always time.”
“And then you’ll fuck my ass?” Naruto laughed, though it was a sincere request. Kakashi started laughing as well.
“Mind the language!” he instructed, though with a smile on his face.