Title: Win-win Situation
Series: Naruto
Rating: PG-13/T for suggestiveness
Warnings: sexual innuendo (what innuendo? they're just talking about sparring), some violence, not the most respectful treatment of Konohamaru's character ever
Pairings: Naruto/Gaara, and some other (het) flirting going around
Setting: canonverse, about 5 years to the future

When Neji had been asked to act as one of the Hokage's two main bodyguards during the exam, he had been honored, and less than thrilled. He spent enough time with Naruto as it was —listening to him think everything out loud and lately mostly count the days until the finals with unbearably vocal impatience, resisting the urge to offer constructive criticism on his jokes, and watching him bicker with his chief of police and top medic like it was their personal way of expressing siblingly love (which it probably was). He loved the man like a brother, himself, but sometimes he could simply be too much.

Imagine his delight at the discovery that Konoha's Loud, Boisterous and Blindingly Orange Hokage (yes, that was what he was nearly officially known as, other than his name) became much more manageable a charge, when came the long-expected chuunin exam finals, and another man of few words captured his undivided attention.

"Gaara, hey Gaara!" came a half-whisper for the tenth thousandth time that day. The Kazekage glanced his way with a small smile, also for the tenth thousandth time.

"Bet you a dinner at Ichiraku's my boy's gonna win this!"

"You have been taking lady Tsunade's instructing a little too literally," the Suna leader mused, and turned back to the arena, where one of the exam's most expected matches was about to commence. Neji would have to admit his own attention was slipping from guarding the Hokage, to observing as 'his' girl prepared to make known the Hyuuga name was not respected merely out of tradition. "Anyway, aren't they both yours?"

Naruto grinned. "Yeah, of course, but I trained him myself, you see! It's almost like old times, right, Neji?"

"R-right," he sputtered, and quickly returned to his task of standing expressionlessly and discreetly scanning the perimeter. To think Naruto would bring that up now.

The Kazekage turned to face him as well. "I have heard great things about your cousin. She is quite the genius herself, I understand?"

Neji nodded, proudly. He had not personally supervised most of her training, but he had sparred with her on quite a few occasions and she gave him genuine challenge. Hinata-sama had become a remarkable shinobi herself in the last few years, against most of her elders' expectations, but her sister was clearly more than on equal standing with her in terms of strength and skill. She would have qualified for an exam far earlier, but in times of war, international tournament spectacles could wait. "Hanabi-sama is strong," he said with utmost certainty.

"Then I have confidence in her abilities," the Kazekage agreed, nodding to his fellow leader. "You're on."

"Just what do you two think you're doing? Are you forgetting you position so quickly?"

The two young men turned to the Tsuchikage sitting on the other side of Naruto, to find him trying very hard to look at them down his nose.

"Oh, sorry, Onoki!" Naruto said with unflinching cheerfulness, which in turn would have made the Tsuchikage flinch quite a bit if he hadn't had to get used to his young colleague's obtrusive informality already. "Who's your favorite then?"

"I am not going to bet my money without sufficient information on the fighters!" the old man insisted. "Both come from renowned clans and that is all I know!"

Naruto crossed his arms and huffed. "What do you want me to do? Didn't you get the brochure with all the fighters' stats?"

The Tsuchikage looked even more annoyed, but said nothing.

"Well?"

The white versions of Guy-sensei and Lee's monster brows furrowed more and the man's face begun to turn red. Neji took the liberty of activating his byakugan to check he wasn't having a heart attack.

"The font is too small, he can't read it," said the Raikage from his other side. "Now would you all just shut up, they're starting!"

Naruto laughed, anything but quietly, and the Tsuchikage looked from him to the Raikage in disbelief. "Why didn't you say so, gramps! Sai, can you get him a magnifying glass?"

"Ninpou: Choujuu Giga!"

Within a few seconds, Neji's fellow bodyguard had whipped out his scroll and ink vial, and sketched a puppy-sized cicada the clear wings of which were large enough to read the brochure through. The Tsuchikage looked at the insect with appallment for a moment, but conceded and begun peering at the small print, mumbling a thank you.

In the arena, Hanabi-sama assumed a defensive position, letting her opponent make the first move. The boy stood still for perhaps a second, and rushed at her with a battle cry, only to stumble backwards with a punch to the jaw, barely managing to dodge the more powerful blow aimed at a major chakra pathway at his shoulder. He was testing her, too. This match was not to be missed.

"So as I understand it, the Sarutobi boy doesn't have a bloodline limit?" asked the Mizukage from the other side of the Kazekage, her eyes still on the teenagers circling each other.

"Nothing like the byakugan?" added the Tsuchikage, nudging the Raikage knowingly and earning a glare that said everything the usually impulsive man was apparently trying not to say out loud. Neji glared back, also keeping his tongue tied. The subject was sore and not to be touched at this time.

"No, but he's a genius of a different kind, I tell you," Naruto insisted. "He learned the rasengan at ten years old, and that's saying something! And his distracting techniques are amazingly creative! You just wait and see!"

"It should be noted his opponent mastered the hakkeshou kaiten at nine," the Kazekage countered, glancing at the brochure that was his source. Neji found himself nodding minutely. "He needs to get close to her for the rasengan to be any good. Or has he developed it further? It is, after all, an incomplete jutsu."

"Who says he hasn't? I did!" Naruto said, a little unsurely.

"You have the requisite, exceptionally large reserve of chakra and stamina."

"Oh come on. It's not that exceptional..."

"Yes it is, Naruto," the Kazekage sighed, closing his eyes as he did, "it's nearly unique."

Naruto frowned, not paying attention to his colleague lapsing to the habit of addressing this particular colleague by his given name. He never called the redhead by anything else, as far as Neji had heard, anyway (and he didn't particularly care to know what it was if Naruto did have a name for Gaara of the Desert that was not meant for the ears of foreign dignitaries and personal bodyguards). "Well, I never tire you out, do I?"

The Kazekage cleared his throat, probably not intending to draw the eyes of everyone in the box seat onto himself, but managing to do just that.

"That's because I also have an exceptionally large—" Neji winced in sympathy when a slight stutter brought a pause to an unfortunate point in the sentence. He glanced to the side to see the Suna leader's own bodyguards not-quite suppressing grimaces in a similar reaction. "—amount of stamina and chakra." The man waited a beat to collect himself, and finally gave a small smirk as he continued. "I doubt you have never realized it before, how very few others could probably keep up with either of us."

Naruto smirked back, letting his mouth spread into a full-on grin. "Oh I'm aware of that allright. Though it's not like I'd know from experience or anything. You keep me too busy to find out."

"Is that a complaint?"

"Far from it. Keep me as busy as you please, Gaa-ra," Naruto sing-songed, adding a little more roll to the name's middle consonant than what would have kept Neji from worrying. Next to him, Sai was simply fascinated, and utterly useless. Why was Shikamaru a teacher and not an ANBU, again?

"My," came a melodious, higher-pitched voice; far from clueless, and equally far from helpful, "I simply must spar with you two some day. You are talking about sparring, aren't you?"

Despite the impending disaster, Neji had to smile a little at the daggers the Sand bodyguard duo was glaring at the Mizukage.

"Yes!" the young kages answered in unison, a little too loudly.

"B-but no thanks," Naruto continued, showing the finest of his skills in diplomatic tip-toeing. "We kind of have this arrangement, it's working fine, being exclusive..."

The Kazekage let him start the first words of two more sentences, the contents of which thankfully would remain a mystery, and lent his perfectly calm voice to rescue his ally. "An oddity of old friends, I'm afraid," he rationalized. "The compatibility we noticed as early as at twelve years of age has grown with time, and we find our respective styles suit each other perfectly, to give the optimal challenge and results. But, perhaps we could consider..."

The Mizukage's smile widened. Naruto gaped, scandalized.

"Wha—? Gaara?"

"But Hokage-sama, you spar with me all the time," Sai butted in. Neji's eyes turned in their sockets to look at him so fast he feared damaging his optical nerves.

"WILL YOU ALL JUST SHUT UP AND WATCH THE MATCH!" the Raikage snapped, throwing his popcorn bowl into the wall behind him. The Tsuchikage simply chuckled and shook his head, muttering something about what kind of people he was leaving the world in the hands of soon (it had been "any day now" for the past five years).

In the arena, Konohamaru had blasted two rasengans into the ground without even grazing Hanabi-sama, having landed a few minor punches through admittedly clever use of bunshins instead. He was clutching his right arm that was barely functioning, and she was waiting for him to charge again, confident it would be the end of his seal-making ability for the rest of the match.

"I'll place my money on Hyuuga," the Mizukage stated, the flirt in her voice gone but amusement all the clearer.

"Is the stake still a meal at Ichiraku's?" the Kazekage enquired, also merely conversational now.

"Eh, I guess so," Naruto shrugged. "I thought it would be just you and me though," he added very quietly.

"You can cook for me later tonight," the Kazekage whispered back with a smile. "Or, I will if I lose the bet." Naruto nodded to conclude the quick exchange. Neji sighed in relief. There was hope yet for him to survive the day.

Konohamaru raised his arms in a wise move to use them now if he was going to. Naruto recognized the seal and leaned closer to the railing.

"Allright! Here it comes!"

"Oiroke no Jutsu: Konohamaru Ultimate Version!"

The boy disappeared inside a white cloud of smoke, and Neji remembered Naruto's earlier bragging of how his student had told him he had come up with the most foolproof adaptation of the technique. Hanabi-sama's face twitched, her byakugan seeing through the smoke a moment earlier than the rest of them.

"Hanabi-chaaan~ Let's not fight! Wouldn't you like to go out on a date with me instead?"

In the thinning puff of white stood a man, arms flexed and body twisted in a pose calculated to show off his form. It was entirely unnecessary, of course, as the form would hardly get more pronounced no matter which way it bent. There was bulging, overdeveloped muscle under every inch of shiny, oiled skin, and Neji knew his cousin's excellence at anatomy study told her as well as him how there was no way most of those muscles even existed in the human body. Konohamaru was naked save for the wisp of a cloud around his hips and the scarf billowing in the air around his trunk of a neck. His face was unchanged down to the smug grin.

The only sound heard was the Mizukage snorting and Naruto's palm slapping against his forehead. The Kazekage reached to pat the back of his other hand.

In the next split-second there was the splash of blood on the arena that Konohamaru had probably been sure would follow, only it came from his own nose and not Hanabi-sama's, as she leaped to plant her foot in his unexpecting face. The jutsu dispelled as he hit the ground, thankfully returning him into a fully-clothed teenage boy. He shielded his face when she walked over.

"Do you yield?" were her first words during the match.

"What did I do wrong? I took it as far to the extreme as I could imagine..." he muttered in disbelief. "What did I leave out?"

"Do you yield?" she repeated.

"Don't hurt me!"

He recoiled from the hand she reached in his direction, and she pulled him to his feet despite his lack of cooperation. As the examiner declared her the winner, Neji caught his cousin smiling at her opponent. A peace offering and not a gloat, he noted, and nodded approvingly as Konohamaru hesitantly returned it. The best way to end a fight was as friends as far as Neji was concerned.

Through the crowd cheering he couldn't really hear it, but he read her lips telling the boy the missing ingredient had been a mustache, and watched him seriously consider the new information, to her well-concealed amusement. He was almost looking forward to quietly overseeing the conversation Naruto would have with his protege.

"Well, I'm a man of my word," the blond sighed regretfully. "After the next match, Ichiraku's it is. What do you want for dinner, Gaara?" He spoke the last bit quietly again, though Neji had no doubt the others were leaving it without reaction simply out of courtesy.

"Surprise me."

Naruto winked. "Don't I always." He raised his voice to its usual volume and looked at other his fellow leaders. "Are we gonna bet for this match, too?"

"I'll pass," grumbled the Raikage, bits of rock crunching between his teeth every now and then as he finished the popcorn one of his bodyguards had retrieved from halfway inside the stone wall.

"One meal of ramen is enough for me, too," the Tsuchikage agreed. The Mizukage also politely declined.

The two remaining leaders looked at each other with familiar smiles, and Neji's optimism begun to crumble again. The conversation had in whispers was far from over.

"Say, if I win, are you gonna wear that, uh, new sparring outfit?" Naruto suggested, a wide grin stretching the whiskers on his cheeks.

"And if I win, what?"

"I'll... give you the advantage of having my hands tied?"

"I don't want your hands tied, you need to be able to make bunshin."

"Oh, then I'll make as many as you want?"

"Which fighter are you betting for, already?"

Neji supposed the bright side was he would at least not be expected to guard the Hokage from within a hearing distance tonight.