Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

Things don't immediately work out.

Some people need convincing that it's really in everybody's best interest that the Villages disarm a bit and the Bijuu are allowed to live freely. You know, like any other sapient being.

Those same people are afraid of what the Bijuu could potentially do, which makes the Bijuu themselves nervous and, well, a little miffed.

Thankfully, Naruto is able to convince everyone to calm down through a mixture of puppy-dog eyes and the ability to wipe out nations by sneezing in their general direction.

(Also, he's apparently a god now. So, there's that.)

Through raw power, charisma, and a smidge of religious fervor, Naruto manages to explain to everyone that being enslaved because of what they could potentially do is what made the Bijuu lash out in the first place. Acting as a mediator, he arranges for the Bijuu to swear that they will never side with one nation over another. That, if they ever do act, it will only be for the benefit of humanity and the world as a whole. Outside of that, they will live their lives peacefully in nature, spreading peace and knowledge throughout coming generations. Guardians and teachers instead of WMD's.

(This agreement, of course, hinges on the agreement that humans will never try to make them into weapons again.)

A formal agreement is written up and signed, a covenant on which a united human race will eventually be built. In commemoration of what the Fourth Shinobi War was about, and what those who fought in it sacrificed their lives for.

On the insistence of literally every party involved, Naruto signs the treaty last, in his own name. He also agrees to serve as a mediator for the Bijuu till the end of his days (if that end ever comes), and that his descendants will continue that tradition in perpetuum. A duty to both humanity and the Bijuu themselves, to insure the agreement between them continues forevermore.

After the impromptu ceremony (in which, Naruto will later realize, he single handedly insured peace among all the major powers of the world) the Bijuu give their heartfelt goodbyes and leave in search of territories of their own.

All except one.

("Are you sure you don't want to go? I'm pretty sure I could release you without dying, if you wanted to find yourself a home.")

(Kurama rolled its eyes. "Idiot. I already have.")

Naruto understands love.

He loves the scent of ramen, how it fills his heart with a sense of Home no other food ever does, and he loves the Ichiraku's too.

He loves Sasuke, his brother in spirit if not (immediately) in blood.

He loves Kakashi, who could have been his family years ago if he had only possessed the courage to reach for Naruto's hand.

(And will always be his family, now that he has.)

He loves Tsunade, and Jiraiya, and Sarutobi, and Iruka. Who are as much his parents as Minato and Kushina are.

(The memory of punching Minato will, secretly, always hold a place of pride in his heart. But he loves him and Kushina as well.)

He loves Sakura and Shikamaru, who are his best friends, and all his other precious people. Regardless of where they are from or who their ancestors were.

He loves the color orange, and training, and Konoha.

He loves Hinata, who risked her life to save him and was the first person to ever say that they loved him.

He loves Kurama, who has been with him since even before he was born.

(But he does not Love anything. Does not even realize that he is missing Love from his life.)

"Eh? What are you talking about? Of course I know what love is!"

Kurama rolls its eyes (again, because every day with Naruto is an exercise in patience) and tells Naruto to make a shadow clone with only its chakra.

Naruto looks confused, but does so without complaint. He gathers a mass of the super-dense energy and shapes it into a clone. Half-way through, Kurama gently takes over. It pours more and more of its chakra into the clone, and when the body grows too large, it folds and compresses it down into a smaller form. By the time it is finished, Kurama has created a copy of itself in miniature, roughly the same size as Naruto himself. It then places its consciousness into that small splinter of its power.

Kurama opens its eyes, and looks up at a stunned Naruto. The two stare at each other in silence for several moments.

Then Kurama leans up, and licks Naruto's face.

"H-hey! Stop that!"

(Kurama doesn't stop. In a way, Naruto's emotional retardation is it's fault, so it's also Kurama's responsibility to fix.)

Kurama and Naruto start sleeping together that night.

(Not like that, pervert. Kurama doesn't even have genitals.)

It happens without fanfare. Naruto collapses into bed after a long day of running around helping people and/or studying his ass off to qualify for Jounin. The chill night air makes him shiver, but he is too exhausted to get up and take out extra blankets. As he drifts off to sleep, Kurama climbs into bed with him, and wriggles its way between his arms.

Naruto pulls Kurama close and smiles. In the morning, neither of them speak of it.

(Why would they? The two of them have been closer before. Literally inside each other's hearts and minds, in fact.)

That doesn't change the fact that, for the first time in his life, Naruto was cold, and someone else warmed him at their breast.

The next night, Naruto hops into bed again, far less tired than the day before. He waits for Kurama to join him before he turns out the lights.

Naruto never calls it cuddling, and Kurama never has to claw his face off in response.

Chouji starts spending time with Karui on diplomatic missions. Within two weeks, they are attached at the hip. Ino begins helping Sai with his issues, and even Naruto can see the way they look at each other. Shikamaru and Temari still insist that they are just friends.

With each budding relationship, tears of joy well up in Naruto's eyes. He becomes some kind of unholy combination of mother hen and matchmaker, and uses all his terrible power to destroy any obstacles in the path of his friends' happiness before they even realize that they're there.

(Chouji's mother attempts to set up an Omiai between her son and a pretty young noblewoman from the capital. Naruto just happens to be heading out on a mission the same time she arrives in Konoha. No one knows exactly what is said, but the noblewoman insists on giving her thanks to the young hero in person. They speak together quietly for less than a minute, in full view of over a hundred people, and by the time Naruto leaves for his mission with a kind wave, she is in tears of joy and immediately runs off to become a nun.)

However, when Sasuke is finally released from the hospital and leaves Konoha while basically professing his undying love for Sakura, a different type of tear is shed.

It's not that he's sad he can't be with Sakura (or Sasuke), he tells Kurama while in bed that night. It's that seeing them together finally drove home the fact that everyone around Naruto seems to be finding something special with each other. Something sacred that exists just outside of his own reach.

Kurama doesn't roll it's eyes. It bites him, hard.

("Ow, Fuck!")

Then it rolls over, and sleeps with it's back to him.

(Naruto grumbles, but secretly is glad Kurama did not leave him to sleep alone.)

"Excuse me?" Hinata says.

"You heard me. Your body, I need it. Let me inside you."

Despite Hinata's radiant beauty, this was the first time anybody had ever said such things to her.

(Because her father and brother would castrate any who tried, not because she is in any way undesirable.)

To be frank, however, she never expected the first person to say such things to her to be a genderless fox demon. Spirit. Thing.

...what were the Bijuu anyway?

Hinata shook her head to dispel the tangent she had wandered into. Kurama watched her patiently. The two locked eyes, and the rest of the world seemed to fall away as they studied each other.

"What do you need...my body for?"

Kurama flicked one of it's tails in a vaguely shrug-like gesture.

"Naruto."

Hinata stared at Kurama for several more seconds, weighing it.

"Okay."

And that was that. Kurama melts into a cloud of golden chakra, and embraces Hinata's every cell. It is the second time she has received Kurama's power, but this time is different. During the war, Kurama had been splitting its focus between tens of thousands of people. Now, however, there is only the two of them.

Another thing that is different, Hinata realizes, is that Kurama is being far more thorough this time. Before it had merely infused her already existing power and settled over her like a cloak. Now, Kurama is inside every piece of her being. Body, mind, and soul. It is intimate to the extreme, but Hinata accepts the spirit without a thought of violation.

It is, in many ways, like receiving the world's greatest hug.

Slowly, Kurama finishes it's task and retreats from Hinata. It begins to reform.

Kurama first becomes a sort of silhouette of Hinata. Then, it begins to change subtly. It's breasts, while still large, shrink slightly. It grows taller, its legs longer, and it's hair grows in both volume and length until it flows behind it like a cape.

By the time Kurama is finished, it has become a she.

Hinata looks her over, and realizes that, while Hinata herself served as this new form's base, at least one other woman's features have been added to the mix. She asks who.

"Uzumaki Mito. She's the only other host I've had besides Naruto's mother, and I've been led to believe that humans do not look kindly on that sort of thing."

Hinata turns vaguely green, and nods in confirmation.

"...also, she was the love of Hashirama's life. If even a tenth of his feelings for her carried over to Naruto, I imagine he will be more than happy with this form."

Kurama thanks Hinata and turns to leave, but she stops the newly female spirit before she can make it to the door.

"Why? Why me?"

Kurama looks at her like that is a ridiculous question, and a part of Hinata's heart she had almost denied swells in joy.

"Kurama? I'm home!"

Naruto enters his apartment, tired both physically and emotionally. Today was tougher than most, in more ways than one, and he is glad to no longer have to return to an empty home.

"It took you long enough, I ordered out to Ichiraku!"

The smell of ramen and the joy he gets from learning Ayame implemented his idea are enough to distract Naruto from the strange voice that called to him from the kitchen area.

His new apartment was a gift from the villagers for saving them from Pain, and is over twice the size of his old one. Enough that the kitchen is actually it's own room. He removes his sandals and tiredly makes his way down the hall.

Then he entered the kitchen, and chokes in shock.

There is a woman in his apartment. She has long, gorgeous orange hair, the color of sunsets and sunrises. She is taller than him by a few inches, with legs that seem to go on for miles and perky breasts that are almost too much for the apron she wears to hold.

The apron, it just so happens, is the only thing she is wearing, and he gets a very nice eyeful of her luscious behind as she hums to herself while preparing tea.

It looks very much like a peach.

Naruto is trying and failing to get his heart out of his throat and back into his chest where it belongs when she turns (with an extremely unnecessary twirl that reveals her hair is naturally that color) and he sees a pair of mischievous crimson eyes.

His wildly beating heart stops.

"Kurama?"

The woman (Kurama) looks up and smiles (Kurama!) adoringly.

"Welcome home dear, come sit down for dinner!"

Mechanically, Naruto does as he's told. He sits. And Kurama places a bowl of ramen in front of him. As he picks up his chopsticks, she pours a fresh cup of green tea for him to enjoy. Then, she sits for her own meal. Not across the table from Naruto, but right beside him. He looks at her as if she is an alien, and she scoots her chair close enough that they are leaning against each other.

"Mou! What are you doing silly? Eat up before it gets cold!"

Saying this, she takes a few noodles on her own chopsticks and brings them up to his mouth.

"Say ah!"

He does.

The two of them ate together, slowly. A strange caricature of a newlywed couple. When they had finished, Kurama stood and placed their cups and bowls into the sink. Then she strutted over to him, and sunk down into his lap.

"There, now you've had dinner. What would you like next? A bath?"

She grinned at him sultrily, and he flushed crimson.

"Or maybe...me?"

She didn't give him time to answer, slamming her own lips against his before he could blink. He opened his mouth in surprise, and her tongue began to ravenously plunder his own. They continued kissing each other hungrily, even Naruto getting into it, if only physically.

Then Kurama's hand slid under his waistband.

"Whoa!"

Naruto shoved Kurama off and flung himself to the other side if the room, panting wildly.

"What the actual fuck!?"

Sighing, Kurama placed a hand on her (HER!) hip and glared frostily at him.

He tried desperately to ignore the raging inferno in her eyes.

*Sigh* "Really? You couldn't have just shut up and played along for a little longer? We were almost to the good part!"

Naruto swallowed thickly and glared right back.

"Kurama. Just-just what was that?"

She flipped her hair dramatically and rolled her eyes, sighing again.

"What do you think it was? I made you dinner, acted like a proper female in heat, and we were about to fuck when you messed everything up."

He choked.

"F-fuck?! No-what? What do you mean I messed it up!? I don't even know what you were doing!"

"Don't be stupid. You've been moping around for days because all your little friends are mating with each other, so I decided this would make you feel better."

Naruto paled, and a dark expression came over his face.

"So what? You felt sorry for me and thought some meaningless sex is what I needed? I've been 'moping' because everyone is finding something real, something I can't have! That doesn't mean faking it is the answer!"

Kurama slapped him.

Naruto growled and was about to punch his stupid friend right in her stupidly pretty face when he noticed the tears.

"It wasn't fake, you moron!"

She kissed him again, and this time their hearts connected in a way they never did when the two simply touched hands.

Naruto was flooded with his partner's emotions and, for the first time in his life (another first Kurama brought him), he felt Love.

It burned.

It was wonderful and amazing and the greatest sensation he had ever experienced, but it was also painful. It hurt more than having his heart pierced, hurt more than Sasuke leaving, or when Kurama herself was torn from his belly. In that moment, the blissful agony he felt eclipsed a lifetime of loneliness.

His mother, holding him in her arms. Both his parents, dying for him. Iruka, declaring him a valued comrade. The village, accepting him. Sasuke, coming home with him.

Hinata.

When Kurama's lips finally left his own, Naruto noticed he was crying.

"I...you love me?"

She kissed him again, a gentle peck on his bruised lips.

"Always, and forever."

Naruto tried to make it to their bed.

Kurama thought the kitchen table was just fine.

The kitchen table was not just fine. In fact, it broke underneath them within the first few thrusts.

As they laid together, basking in the afterglow, Naruto rolled over and cupped Kurama's cheek.

"I-I don't-"

She placed a finger over his lips.

"It's fine. I know...this is new for you. But you taught me how to let go of my hate after a thousand years. I think I can teach you how to love after seventeen."

She leaned in to kiss him, sweet and tender.

"The Yondaime may not have thought much of it, but I know better. A god descended from the heavens and bound our souls together. There is no future, no Pure Land, for either of us without the other. Always and forever."

She grinned cheekily at his stunned expression.

"So you better get used to this. We're in it for the long haul."

She straddled him, and they got started on round six.

Always and Forever, I've already found my home.

This sweetest pain shall never end.