Look! Another story that is
not an update of "Festival!" ::bricked:: I'M
SORRY. I'll work on an update when I graduate college in...um...four
days? Yes. This is another LJ keyword fic (keyword being "camera"). I
hope everyone enjoys.
How Many
Words Does a Picture Say?
“Naruto.
Stop it.”
“What? I’m smiling!”
Sakura lowered the camera,
her eyes flat and her mouth turned dramatically downward in a scowl. She
understood that Naruto wasn’t used to wearing the Hokage robes yet—only a week
had gone by since his initiation ceremony. He’d been fighting to don those
robes—and the responsibility that went with them—since he was a kid, so he had
every right to be excited and giddy now that his dream was realized.
Hell, she was
excited and giddy for him.
But still. She wanted him
to have a nice picture for visitors to admire, and at the rate things
were progressing—or not progressing—she wouldn’t get one before the next
equinox.
“You’re not smiling,” she
said in a pained voice, rotating her wrist to ease the stiffness that settled
there after nearly twenty minutes of holding the camera in the same spot. “You’re…”
She made a few sweeping, circular gestures in an attempt to articulate, which
prompted Naruto to tilt his head and stare at her as if she had grown
appendages where they didn’t belong. Her scowl deepened. “I don’t even know how
to explain it. But that’s not smiling, Naruto.”
Seated in a red plush
armchair that they’d dragged in front of the fireplace and turned at an
angle—she insisted on a cozy backdrop—her old teammate and good friend—best friend—rested
his chin against his palm, his expression a mixture of petulance and
mischievousness.
“I don’t think you’re being
fair, Sakura-chan.”
Her brow creased.
“Fair?”
He may not know how to
smile correctly, but he knew how to smirk. She made a mental note to pummel him
later, once she’d snapped a satisfactory photo and didn’t need to worry about
mussing up his hair. Or bruising his jaw.
“You should at least show
me what I’m doing wrong so I can fix it.”
Screw the jaw. She was
going for the jugular.
Of course, she ought to
have expected him to do something like this. They’d known each other for years,
after all, and spent a good majority of those years learning one another’s
quirks, among other things. Given the opportunity, he’d trap her in
compromising situations because the trickster in his nature loved seeing her
squirm and rant and rave. He told her so himself.
Jerk.
Never mind that she was
basically inviting him to do so when her guard was down.
“No.”
Naruto fixed her with an
exaggerated pout, his upper lip completely hidden by his lower.
“Awww,
Sakura-chyyyaaaan.
Come on. Please?”
She felt her resolve begin
to fray around the edges.
“No,” she said again,
stubbornly. “I refuse.” Her face would look ridiculous if she were to emulate
that thing he called a smile. His face always looked a little silly, so
it didn’t matter as much for him.
Well…okay. Maybe his face
didn’t always look silly.
“I am Hokage now,
you know,” he pointed out, folding his arms over his chest. “I could just order
you to do it.”
Sakura
quirked an eyebrow.
“You could.” She switched
the camera to her other hand, and flexed the free one. “But then you’d have to
deal with the consequences.”
Oh, he outranked her,
certainly, though his affection for her, coupled with her brute physical
strength and rather short temper, gave her quite a bit of leverage, a fact they
both knew well.
He coughed, shifting around
in his chair.
“Forget I said that.”
“Done.”
“So…why are we taking this
picture, again?”
Sakura let out an
exasperated breath.
“Because
it’s important.”
Naruto, never comfortable
sitting in one position for an extended period of time, slouched forward with
his forearms on his thighs.
“Why is it important? I can
look in the mirror if I want to know—”
“The picture isn’t for you,
idiot,” Sakura interrupted, her patience almost at its limit. “It’s for display
at the
She neglected to inform him
she planned on making copies for herself and their friends. What he wasn’t
aware of wouldn’t hurt him.
Naruto appeared to have
reached some sort of conclusion; he had a triumphant gleam in his eyes.
“Which means it’s important
enough for you to help me with my smile, right?”
Sakura considered whipping
the camera at him, but then she’d have a broken camera and no picture to show
for it.
And…Naruto would have a
broken head.
She took the less
destructive route and glared at him.
“You…you…”
So much
for that leverage.
“Come on,” Naruto wheedled
in a singsong voice. “Admit it, Sakura-chan, you lost. Let’s see your
impression of the best Hokage that’s ever Hokaged.” He motioned at himself with
a thumb, grinning cheekily.
If she weren’t in the
middle of sulking, she’d laugh at his corny catchphrase like she’d done
countless times before—it had become an inside joke between the two of them.
She bit her quivering lip
anyhow, as a safeguard.
“Do I have to?” Futile,
really, but she figured she’d try.
Naruto made a pretense of
thinking by holding his chin and averting his gaze to the ceiling—she about
lost her battle with laughter then. This was definitely one of those times when
his face looked silly.
“Hmm…in light of previously
stated concerns, I believe the answer is…Yeah. You do.”
She sighed.
“Fine. But don’t laugh at me.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise?”
He held up a solemn hand. “Scout’s honor.”
Sakura squared her
shoulders. Better quit stalling and get on with it, or she’d be here all day. He’d
keep her captive until she honored her loss.
“All
right, all right.
Ready?”
He nodded eagerly, gripping
both armrests in anticipation.
Willing herself to focus
and disregard her pride, she did the best she could to reproduce the expression
he’d been using. His mouth was bigger than hers, so she couldn’t stretch it as
wide as him, and the shapes of their faces were different—his cheeks were
slightly pudgier than hers, and she had a taller forehead—but somehow she
pulled it off.
Naruto was silent for
roughly a minute. He turned beet red, and eventually the exertion proved too
much for him to handle.
In other words, he broke
his promise.
“Holy shit, Sakura-chan,”
he wheezed amid strangled breaths, “you looked like you were…you were…Gai or
something…”
“Well you looked like him
first!” she shot back, as red as Naruto by this point. “You told me to show
you, so I showed you!”
“I don’t look like Gai,” he
said, still giggling.
“And I do?”
“No…but you did…”
She stamped her foot, half
tempted to throw a tantrum and storm out. The memory of the last tantrum she ever
threw, when she was Tsunade-shishou’s apprentice, rid her of that notion. Needless
to say, the Godaime did not tolerate tantrums, even though she threw some
spectacular ones herself.
Besides, Sakura was twenty.
She outgrew all that nonsense years ago.
One can dream, anyway.
Crossing her arms, she
waited for his mirth to run its course.
“Are you finished?”
He wiped his eyes and
scrubbed his face with a corner of his sleeve.
“Mm-hm. Er…sorry.”
She shrugged off his
apology with a distinctly unfeminine snort and started fiddling with the
camera’s zoom function.
“Sit up straight,” she
directed, watching him through the viewfinder. “And fix your collar. It’s
lopsided.”
Because he’d already
irritated her today, he obeyed without hesitation or protest.
“Is the hat okay?”
“Perfect,” she said
absently, zooming in just a little bit more. “Now don’t move an inch, and smile
like a normal human being, please.”
He faltered.
“Uh…how?”
Sakura rolled her eyes. He
made it sound as though smiling was an Olympic sport. It wasn’t that hard, was
it?
And then she got an idea.
“You know the way you smile
at me? Do it like that.”
“Oh. You should’ve
said so earlier, Sakura-chan!”
Yes, she probably should
have. But she didn’t think of it earlier. She didn’t remember that, when he
smiled at her, he did it with his entire face, as if his mouth alone wasn’t
enough to express the happiness he felt.
When she peered through the
viewfinder again, there it was.
Her finger hesitated above
the shutter button a moment, and then she pressed down.
"Sakura-chan...that's the Gai picture, isn't it?"
They stood in the foyer of
the
Naruto had his nose
scrunched up and his hands tucked in his pockets. Sakura twisted a piece of her
hair around her fingers.
“I realized it was a more
honest representation of your personality.” She poked his side. “You’re Hokage
because you’re you.”
He blushed and muttered
something unintelligible, and slung an arm around her shoulders.
“Lunch? My treat.”
She hugged him about the
waist.
“Sure.”
They walked.
“Wait…are
you saying my personality is like Gai’s?”
Sakura laughed.
She didn’t tell him she had
her own framed picture of him set on her dresser, a picture that she wasn’t
going to share with anyone, not even him.
The smile in that picture
was hers to keep.