"The art of love will be my challenge. We are going to measure our prowess as men. I challenge you to a battle to determine which of us is the better lover!"

Lee's face was full of serious enthusiasm until he realized it was Kakashi who had answered his knock, and then the young Genin's expression changed and he gave Kakashi The Look. The Look clearly stated 'I don't understand this and I'm not sure I like it, since I'm wondering if you didn't seduce Gai-sensei with some impure wile, but as you are now Gai-sensei's Dearest One, I will jump in front of a kunai for you'.

"...any of your parent’s friends have any kids of less than, say, six years of age?" "No, not that I know of." "Huh-huh.” A suspicion suddenly crystallized in Tsunade’s mind. Between her fingers, her punch glass started to crack.

Spring fever can be a distracting ailment, even for Shinobi.

It was seven forty four PM, not that Iruka was watching the clock at all. He'd be an idiot to watch the time and expect Hatake Kakashi to show up for a date at eight o'clock.

The Narutostuck world is a fusion wherein I have jammed Homestuck characters into the Naruto universe and am pretending they were always there. Basically the Land of Space (Uchuu no Kuni) lies to the west of the Land of Wind (Kaze no Kuni), separated by a great desert; its capitol is the village of Hidden Time (Kouingakure no Sato). For the past century or two, it has been ruled by the Condesce and engaged in an endless war of conquest on the continent across the western sea; recently, however, a rebellion led by the Sufferer succeeded in overthrowing her and establishing a new social order in which discrimination against humans and discrimination by blood caste are officially outlawed. Meanwhile, over in the Elemental Countries, the plot of Naruto has reached some sort of good-guys-win conclusion. Now the people on both sides of the desert are tentatively trying to establish some kind of normal diplomatic and trade relations... but the Condesce and her chief supporters were never caught, and are still seeking to restore their rule.

Sakura at work, because damn it, medic-nin should be scary to fight.

A musing on the social and legal construction of childhood in hidden villages. Downbeat and philosophical.

Temari and her family, before and after the demon.

The first time rain and Temari’s visits coincided, she stood in Shikamaru’s garden for three hours before coming in, soaked, shivering, and grinning from ear to ear. Her clothes were plastered to her body, every curve revealed, ponytails weighed down and dark with water, dripping all over the floor of the entrance with complete disregard for the mess.

"Temari, if you make me kiss him, you will regret it." Gaara's voice brooked no opposition.

Gaara calls the shots; Lee gets the attention; but Sakura inevitably gets what she wants.

Gaara's breath breezed soft against Lee's thigh. "Hold still." Lee did her best to stop moving, but it was difficult.

Temari couldn't bake worth shit. It was commonly known among the village that Temari wasn't exactly a girlie-girl, but before their marriage Shikamaru'd had no concept of just how much the traditional wife he would be.

Shikamaru was never napping in this particular area of the forest ever again. In fact, he might never set foot outside his apartment if given a choice and the ability to sneak quietly away without being spotted by the two high-level jounin below him. They looked to be distracted, but there was no way in hell Shikamaru was risking being caught catching them at what they were doing.

The dust settled slowly. Dirt coated the bodies strewn about like discarded clay dolls, clung to Naruto's skin like another layer of clothing. His blood pounded in his ears like frantic drums, and the sickly sweet metallic scent of blood hung thick in the air over the muted undertones of upturned earth. His fingers hurt from where they were clenched tight around the scrap of green fabric. He took in one choked breath, then another. Only forty seconds had passed.

"One has to wonder if it's all the perverts you're attracted to, or just the crazy ones.”

Kakashi held up a hand. “We’ll pretend this never happened.”

Many waters cannot quench love; neither can the floods drown it. Love is as strong as death.

Team 8 in a quiet moment during the timeskip, with lots of speculation about the origin and nature of the Aburame clan's bond with their kikkai. Fluffy enough to rot your teeth.

"Once upon a time in Fire Country, O my Best Beloved, three Ninjas went on a D-rank mission to retrieve a Cat..." A tale in the style of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. Very silly.

The Wave Mission is a failure. Team Seven is captured. Sasuke is gone. Kakashi is next. Sakura has no choice but to be a hero.

30 young sand sibling drabbles, wherein Temari is (sometimes) a lady, Kankurou doesn't play nice with the other kids, and Gaara is perhaps a little socially inept.

-Through the Spines Unfurling (Five Things You Should Know About Cacti) - sweet nothings - Felt Such a Shaking - Again and Again and Again - #girlavenger, or How Natasha Trended on Twitter and Saved the World - Your Hand in Mine - Cause and Effect - The Queen of All the Living - A Small Cat - In a Place Like This - The Horror of Girls' Night - A Meeting In A Library - The Fandom Job: A Wank Report - 4 times Elliot saved them on a job +1 time they save him - Aiming For The Mark - It's All I Believe In - The One with the Bros - untitled Mad max Star wars fusion - the date - Positive Feedback (x2) - Pretence (sunfish) - 3 times Bitty baked for the Dallas Stars (x2) - keep saying yes - Growing Pains - Baby It's Cold Outside - The Room Where It Happens - Four Times Jack Failed at Flirting With Bittle (And One Time He Wasn't Terrible At It) - The Don’t Blame the Gorilla Job - Seven Things That Didn't Happen On Valentine's Day At Hogwarts, Or Maybe They Did - Scions - trade in these wings on some wheels - Undercover - Unicorn Bait - Blind Date - Ink for Yourself - In Focus - Half the World is Waiting - Close To Home

In which the Sage of Six Paths decides he doesn’t like the ending, and Tobirama gets dragged along to fix things. The outcome is most definitely not what he expected.

Utakata has never considered himself overly important in the grand scheme of things. But when, rather than returning to the afterlife, he finds himself back in a Kiri controlled by the Sandaime Mizukage, he makes a choice. A few well-placed changes might be enough to shift the course of the future, in the end.

Lee accompanies a trade delegation to Suna for the change in scenery and to enrich his son's education. He learns a great deal about cacti.

Kunoichi know how to keep their secrets.

According to the Bingo Book, Hatake Kakashi has two dæmons.

An alternate Naruto ending, in which there are ghosts with a plan, teams reunited, apologies, and happy endings all around.

Everyone's born with their soulmate's first words to them written on their skin, and that should make things easy, but it really doesn't. "Roy has alternatively despised his mark and clung to it like a lifeline. Colonel. Just one word, right at the back of his foot. His literal Achilles’ heel."

Prompt: Anonymous said: I wish you would write fic where Kakashi is not the only Hatake around

When Naruto is five, he's gutted by a drunken civilian and presumed dead. Six months later a girl with ash pale hair and dark blue eyes enters the Academy.

He cannot help but compare himself to the swords that hang on the wall, silver and pale and edged with red, kept in sheathes until they're needed to kill. (At five years old he takes a needle and inks red into his own skin, sharp slashes like the cut of a knife on each cheek, and it’s the first time Uchiha Tajima ever looks at him and smiles.)

The scarred ninja sighed. "You couldn't have brought them by earlier?" "No," Asuma-sensei said, and he was still smiling, "I wanted them to get the full Umino experience." Ino shot a look to her left: Shikamaru's eyes were open wider than their usual droop. What the hell was the Umino experience, those eyes seemed to say.

“No,” Tobirama says again, though he already has a sneaking, sinking suspicion that he’s going to lose this argument, as he does the vast majority of his arguments with Mito. Then, because sometimes the only way to undermine Mito's crazy is to match it, he adds, “If one of us is Batman, the other has to be Robin, and I look terrible in pixie boots.”

Naruto isn’t the only one in the village to earn the title “monster”. At the age of six, he meets a collared Orochimaru and makes a most unlikely ally.

In which Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke are dimension-hopping superheroes. Kind of. More or less.

At the last moment, Mito chooses to bind the Kyuubi to her rather than sealing it within herself. Decades later, Kushina takes up her burden, and finds that maybe it isn’t such a burden after all.

When Tobirama returns with the drinks, Madara glances up, flushes slightly at the sight of him, and tries valiantly, if pathetically, “Do you drink milk? It certainly did your body good.” It takes effort not to throw the tray at him.

Tobirama comes down to breakfast on the first day of classes to find the Great Hall full of snickering, his husband conspicuously absent, and his brother face-down in his eggs.

Iruka saw his first execution barely a year after the Kyuubi. The executioner was a wire thin ninja in combat uniform, one eye covered and his hair almost white in the brutal sun.

Konoha is an experience, and that’s just about the politest way Ine can phrase it.

For an anon prompt on my Tumblr that I kind of hijacked: gai/obito tho, kakashi's utterly terrified of the two ever coming together. "I've met Gai, Kakashi, and guess what? I'm going /to befriend him/." "You wouldn't DARE, Obito." "Oh, I would. We're going to be best friends." Obito and Gai hit it off instantly, and it all goes downhill from there. Kakashi finds them making out once and it's so horrible. He's never going to get that image out of his mind.

“Are you sure I can convince him?” Madara asks dubiously. Hashirama nods. “Only you can convince him,” Hashirama says. Then, solemnly, “Madara, you’re our only hope.”

A super-cracky modern!AU where Akatsuki is a group of quasi-reformed terrorists and former suicide squad now (nominally) on the side of the angels, saving the planet their own way. Mostly accidentally. Or through recycling. (That's entirely Obito's fault.)

"If you're hitting on me, queue's to your left," Dave replies, and then he looks. The man has nice arms. Solid shoulders, strong biceps. Baby face still, baby-blue eyes in the white strobe lights and friendly dimples. Someone got him with funny cat-whiskers paint that's just subtle enough to tickle Dave's funny bone, but with a body like that he's got to be at least twenty. "What, no!" The man blushes so hard Dave can see his face darken even through the flashing lighting and dim of the dance floor. He actually honest-to-God flails his hands, what a dork. "I just -- argh, and you totally know that, don't you?" -- Anonymous asked: Dave/Naruto, hooking up at a house party (papabrostrider is to blame for this one)

Naruto is hot. Kakashi is losing his mind.

Tobirama doesn’t give a damn about gender roles and gender-assigned clothing. Madara really, really doesn’t mind. (Or, Tobirama in thigh-highs and heels. Madara's a fan.)

Morality and logical limits are not Orochimaru’s strong point, even as a loyal Konoha shinobi. Thankfully, it seems that parenting actually is.