Bit longer than the usual.

(Possibly) deleted scene from a fic I'm working on.

Set right after the war, while Team 7 is making their way back to Konoha.

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"Sensei, you're doing it again."

"Doing what, Naruto?" Kakashi blinked, then realised he had been keeping his left eye closed out of habit.

An indignant finger appeared right in front of his new eye. "That!" Naruto huffed, glaring at him with a disgruntled air. "You have two normal eyes right now and they're working perfectly fine, so don't keep doing that thing you used to do in the past!"

Was something like that really worth making such a huge fuss over? Kakashi wondered, rather bemused by his student's odd behaviour. Naruto was hardly the type to nitpick over small matters...

"Maa, I'll get used to this eventually. There's no need to get so worked up, you know, but I'll make an extra effort to remember if it bothers you so much." He smiled at the blond, closing both eyes as he mentally counted down to Naruto's exclamation—

"I'M NOT – IT'S NOT – THAT'S NOT BOTHERING ME AT ALL! I just... it's just that there's no need for you to cover one eye all the time now and the one who has to do that is Sasuke and his Sharinnegan – "

"Shut up, moron. You're being way too loud, and stop calling it that!"

"You shut up, this has nothing to do with you!"

"BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP RIGHT THIS MOMENT, SHANNARO!"

After projecting a one-eyed, somewhat disturbed look at Sakura, Sasuke wisely decided to shuffle further away before either of them annoyed the irate kunoichi any further. Naruto huffed and walked over to Kakashi's other side, grumbling under his breath, then stopped as something landed lightly on his head.

"Thank you for doing this for me, Naruto," Kakashi murmured, patting his student's soft golden hair. "I really appreciate it."

"Ah – um – er," Naruto stuttered, and flailed a little as he tried to string together a coherent reply. "There's no need to make a huge deal out of it, really! It's just, I mean, I just really wanted to help you and getting your Sharingan stolen by Madara looked like it seriously hurt but you're treating it like it's not a super serious thing so I got pretty mad and... uh..." He trailed off, and gave Kakashi the most helplessly confused look he could manage.

"You get the idea, right? I kind of lost track of what I was saying there."

Kakashi found himself pinned by those clear blue eyes, eyes that were still so impossibly kind and bright and hopeful even after all that had happened in the world.

"Ah – yes," he managed to say, quickly dropping both his gaze and his hand from Naruto's head before he could do anything alarming.

This boy is going to be the death of me, Kakashi thought, faintly.

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I admit that I wrote Sasuke into this scene solely for the purpose of the Sharinnegan joke.

So, about Naruto's exclamations... methinks the fellow doth protest too much. ( ๑‾̀◡‾́)σ»