[Naruto] NejiHina Theme Set Smut 21-25
I hate forced hiatuses that don't even have the decency to turn into productive fic-writing. About all I've managed to do is finish this. Bleh.
Good news are that I have Internet at home.
INTERNET AT HOME.
:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Title: NejiHina Smut Themes 21-25
Author: runespoor7
Rating: NC-17
Summary: seventh set of smutty drabbles.
Notes: The legend alluded to in 23. Pack is an Egyptian mythological tale.
21. Books
The Head of the Hyuuga, on coming back home that evening after a nice afternoon spent reassuring three different Hyuugas on their chances to pass the chuunin exam, giving them a lists of jutsus and people they should check out if they wished to improve in the remaining five weeks, listening to her sister rant with too-bright eyes about how insufferable Hinata’s Inuzuka teammate was, and leaving for the Yamanaka flowershop where she discovered Ino had already dragged Kiba and was forcefully pushing into his arms the enormous bouquet he would need if he ever wanted Hanabi to take his invitation to date seriously, found herself meeting with a rather pissed-off cousin.
He was frowning in a way that meant that, had he been anyone else, he would have been pacing furiously the length of her room with his brows furrowed and mumbling darkly all the while.
Being Neji, he just looked a little more frosty than would be considered normal.
Hinata smiled at him when he looked sharply up at her as she entered the room, still unable to get over the fact that hers was one of the few places a grumpy, slightly murderous Neji would choose to go.
She lingered a moment in the doorway, unsure about how to ask Neji what bothered him. After a few seconds of debate, she selected to go to the kitchen and make them tea. She was rather cold and it would give Neji a few minutes to gather his wits; it’d be much less aggressive than assaulting him with questions when she’d barely been back long enough to take off her sandals.
He joined her at the same time as the water started to shiver. She let him mull in the kitchen doorway, stopping the fire under the pot and looking around for cups that could qualify as clean.
Neji caught both as she extended her hand toward a couple, inwardly sighing as to their state, and turned the water on. Hinata watched him wash the two cups methodically, with as much perfectionism as he put in every area of his life, and turned away to get the tea leaves, hiding a smile.
“My team lacks focus,” he finally deadpanned. He seemed to be mostly adressing the cups.
Hinata waited for the other shoe to drop. Everyone knew it was to be hoped that training wasn’t the first thing on a genin’s mind, and if not, severe questions had to be asked; at the same time, of course, they were supposed to take it seriously all the same.
Up until that point, she’d never had an inkling that Neji’s genins were terrible slackers. On the contrary, she’d always found two of them more driven than many (and in a good way, at that); as for the last, she possessed a healthy share of the Inuzuka competitive streak. Hinata tended to think most of Neji’s trouble with them stemmed precisely from it.
Now, what could have happened to make Neji-
“I had to take a porn book from one of them. One of those Icha Icha books,” Neji added.
Cautiously, Hinata set the tea on the tiny table as she considered her next words. Finally, she decided for the obvious and cautiously neutral.
“Which one?”
Neji’s hand made a stabbing motion. “The boy.”
Hinata nodded for herself, wondering how she should present her next question.
“I wonder if it isn’t one of the girls who gave it to him,” he went on. “Which makes it almost worse.”
His voice contained a hint of morbid humour. Hinata privately admitted that the situation didn’t lack a certain irony; normally, when a genin was introduced to the world of Konoha pornography industry, the team’s girl was the last to be suspected. However, Neji’s team was made of two girls and one boy; a non-traditional composition that meant all bets were off.
...Actually, there was a good chance such had been the case.
Neji repeated the stabbing motion at the cup he was rinsing for approximately the fifth time.
“And what did you do with it?” she finally ventured. The casual tone of her voice was belied by the thumping of her heart.
“I took it from him,” of course, his tone carried the meaning over well enough. “It’s in the living room.”
“Ah,” Hinata said quietly.
“Why are you ask- Hinata-sama?”
Neji’s tense voice reached Hinata’s ears at the moment her gaze zeroed on the slim orange cover. Only registering Neji’s vague wariness in the most distant way, she went back into the kitchen, skimming through the contents.
He was looking at her with something akin to horror.
Smiling, she raised the book, a finger between two pages to mark her place. “Did you read it?”
After an eternity spent weighing his words, Neji finally bit out, “No, I did not.”
Hinata’s smile didn’t falter.
She took two more steps toward him.
Neji didn’t move from where he was standing, his back against the sink.
“Then we’ll do it together, don’t you think?”
22. Phone
“I’m... wearing the purple blouse you like, and a pair of black pants,” Hinata says in the walkie-talkie. Her cheeks are quickly turning a sunset shade of pink. “Hum, my hair is undone... And-and you?”
She stays silent for a handful of seconds. On the other side of the bar, the target is still laughing with Neji. He has just put his hand on Neji’s arm, and Neji’s green eyes have shown no sign of surprise.
“Are you thinking of me?” she whispers.
She avoids looking at Naruto; if Kiba’s expression is any indication, he must be on the verge of choking on his beer, and Hinata is trying to avoid attracting attention. Neji is tilting his body slightly toward the man.
“Tell me what you’re doing.”
Neji is smiling; Hinata’s body goes rigid for a moment when she spots the man’s fingers wrapping around his wrist, and the hard angle of the walkie-talkie start digging into the flesh of her palm. She forces her clutch to relax.
On impulse, she whispers, “Don’t lock the door.”
She averts her eyes from Kiba as well, now.
“Don’t-” she closes her eyes “-come until I tell you.”
She manages not to stammer the word, even with Ino gaping on the other end of the line, even when she knows without seeing that Naruto and Kiba are staring at her, but not without emphasising it.
Neji has unfolded his hands, and now his right hand is falling to rest on the man’s thigh. Hinata refrains the urge to bite down on her lip until she bleeds. She dispells the image of the man blinded by his own blood, his smiling face contorted in pain and horror. She can’t afford to daydream about scenarios that are not allowed to come to pass. They are only supposed to beat him up and steal his money, so that when he finds out the forbidden scroll has disappeared, it looks like he’s been mugged.
“Take your hitai-ite off.” Her voice is a bit breathless but it comes off as an order.
The man’s eyes are crinkled into a smile as he says something closer to Neji’s ear than should be considered entirely proper, and in that moment Neji looks back at them. At her. Neji’s eyes are green but his gaze is the same.
Hinata swallows.
A second later, the man is dropping a handful of coins on the table. He doesn’t help Neji off his seat, but when they leave the bar, he has his hand on the small of Neji’s back. Hinata fights off the need to rip it off him.
“Let’s go,” Hinata says before she snaps the communication off; Ino has been ready for five minutes now.
Now the trap is set and the fish has taken the bait, everything is urging her to not waste even one second. She doesn’t think it’s just the mission that is pressing her to go faster.
“Wow,” Naruto is the first to snap back to his senses, while they’re leaving their stools, “what was that all about?”
He doesn’t sound puzzled; more amused, grinning widely as if he thought Hinata had just pulled the best joke ever and he just wanted to be let on it, so he could guffaw at the universe. When she glances at him, Hinata sees the sparkle in his eyes; and also the darker flame burning beneath, like an understanding he can’t utter.
Hinata acknowledges it; the target - dead man she is to let live - has strange slit eyes, metallic like gold, outlined in black, and a low voice rumbling with hissing echoes.
“It was the only thing I could think of,” she says.
“Phone sex as an excuse to communicate,” Kiba mutters behind her, “I’ve got to remember that one.”
But Hinata already isn’t listening anymore.
23. Pack
Konoha has many words to describe a close-knit, loyal group.
People would be surprised - out of Shino, who has similar motivation, and Hinata, who knows him better than he thinks she knows herself - to learn that Kiba, not only knows them all, but has also thought about them all.
He remembers his first days in Team Eight, how he and Akamaru used to talk to each other every night at home before they went to sleep, and sometimes even in the daylight, with the others; when they were trying to see if they really, truly, got the concept and what was asked of them.
-
They don’t need to slip out; Neji and Hinata never came back to the tent, continuing instead to train on far long after the sun has set. But they have stopped training now.
They breathe in hushed whispers on the forest ground, their clothes partly removed to reveal skin not so much glowing under the moonlight as it is muted by their quiet surroundings and the careful shadows of the leaves over them.
They don’t need to be silent, but they have to be discreet, if only because Kiba might after all wake up if they were too loud, even if Kurenai is sleeping in Konoha; she’s not the one who needs to learn how to work with Neji, only watching over their last-minute training before the exam. And that, only because she needs to know that Kiba and Neji will be able to function together while Hinata is around.
It was Hinata’s idea, and Hinata who’d been the one telling Kurenai Kiba and she had found a teammate to take the Chuunin exam with them. Since Hinata never said things she didn’t mean, Kurenai had known she would be able to work with Neji. She’d been less sure about Kiba.
And on the whole, she hadn’t been... completely wrong. It is obvious that neither likes the other’s way to interact with Hinata. It is equally obvious that they refuse to let it ruin their chances at passing the exam.
This is their third try.
And so Kiba and Hinata and Neji, in preparation for it, are choosing to spend their last two weeks before they have to make the trip to Hidden Sand slightly out of the village to build up their team routines.
-
Team, they were supposed to be.
And for most of Konoha that’s the simplest unit, really - or hell, in any case that’s the simplest unit when you’re just a genin freshly graduated from the Academy, even if, he supposes, everyone’s got to realise some day or another that there’s really more to it than just that. And if they never did before, then the last few years must have taught all the older folk one thing or two about it, what with Team Seven and the like. And the Sannin.
But it never was the simplest unit for him, not even then.
Was a team just made of the three genins, or did that include the jounin-sensei as well? If so, then why wasn’t the jounin-sensei automatically the team’s leader? Hell, Kurenai never stopped him from claiming he was team leader (except when he was being too loud).
From what he’d gathered, a team was composed of three genins and a jounin-sensei.
Which he could still understand, but wasn’t all that helpful in Team Eight’s particular case, because Akamaru was as much a member of the team as anyone else, and nothing could have kept Kiba’s suspicions about Shino’s bugs at bay after the first two months or so.
And then you had the patchwork teams that were put together just for the one mission, depending on people’s aptitudes and other missions blablabla. Those were actually the less difficult to understand for Kiba, because they were just about work and with none of the half-philosophical half-feeling-in-his-guts that gave him raging headaches if he spent too long on it.
But okay, alright, team. Team Eight. He didn’t understand the general rules, but he got Team Eight.
-
Neji and Hinata shouldn’t actually need to get even more training and sparring than they already have, but they do, they always do because Hinata is not as good as Neji and she will not stop trying until she reaches her maximum and she cannot do any better. (Until she dies.)
Everyone knows this about Hinata who knows anything about her, and it doesn’t raise any suspicion, only vague grumbling from Kiba before he decides to go to bed and leave them to their Jyuuken, and he throws a vaguely dirty look Neji’s way. He’s never completely forgiven Neji for what he did during that chuunin exam, and he’s never completely forgiven himself that he wasn’t in the stands supporting her at the time.
But now they’re not training anymore.
Their tongues are battling with one another, and they’re rolling a little on the ground, with their limbs and clothes entangled, and Hinata’s fingers are on Neji’s thighs, and Neji’s hair brushes against Hinata’s breasts, and fabric is getting a little in the way, but not enough to distract them.
-
Family, okay, that was easy. Everyone knows that one.
(So o-kay, sometimes it’s not as clear-cut as he’d first imagined it’d be, because yeah, remember Team Seven? Yeah well, at least two of their number had really, really got issues on family. And that was without even getting into the Sai thing, because Kiba wasn’t sure he wanted to tackle the problem.
And that seems to bring another category, called friends, if only in Team Seven’s case, but Kiba’s since long decided figuring in which pre-prepared neat little box to put Team Seven isn’t worth the raging headache, yeah, that one.
Besides, Team Seven seems to have a sort of problem with boxes. As in, make them all explode.
And before that, needing to fit said boxes or die trying, as exemplified by Sasuke getting into that bucket a lifetime ago, the closest thing to a metaphor Kiba ever heard about actually happening in real life.
Not that Kiba doesn’t see where they come from, per se (where they’re going to end up is another story, but there’s nothing he can do about it, so...), but it’d have saved him a lot of uncertainty and bleeding existential brainstorming when he was a teen if they had been ever so slighty less Team Sevenish.
Kiba’s not really geared toward angst as it is, so it’d stayed as brainstorming.
Moving on.)
Right, family. But even then, family’s actually not that clear-cut, because in quite a lot of cases (such as Kiba’s, for that matter), it runs into something that should logically be the same bloody thing, but it’s not, otherwise there wouldn’t be a different word for it.
-
They stop a moment to get their breath back, breathing in the same air and looking straight into one another’s eyes. Neji is on top at the moment, his weight resting down in a way that both of them find rather nice, warm and secure.
They are gazing at each other and then he leans slowly, slowly, and she opens her lips and raises her chin before he even completes the motion, and they are kissing in a manner that is more deliberate, more focused, slow and heavy with meaning. The time for fooling around has passed.
Slowly, he positions himself at her entrance as she places her hands on his chest.
The open shirt falls around them like curtains, and Hinata is reminded of legends from far-away countries as he leans on her like the sky over his sister the earth and she parts her legs to meet him, mounts and vales folding and trembling, and she bites her lip when he enters her, fills her until there is no other place in the world she belongs to; Neji is reminded, once more, that she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen and he probably (doubtessly) doesn’t deserve bedding stars fallen into his sheets, the moon still in their eyes and night tangled in their hair, but she’s so warm and inviting and everytime he pushes into her he thinks he’s going to die.
-
Clan. There, you have it.
Probably the biggest headache of all if Kiba was one of the higher-ups and breaking his mind into tiny tiny circles to get over the Uchiha, the Hyuuga, and, oh yeah, the Uchiha again, but personally Kiba doesn’t give much more than a rat’s arse about it. Or two, if you insist. Personally, he’s quite content with going with the official policy: if something bears a certain last name, then it’s from the clan with the same name.
That’s what clans are supposed to be about.
(And, sure, they weren’t family. Because while you could, technically, call that bastard Hiashi Hinata’s father, you’d have to be pretty cynical to go and call the Hyuuga her family. They’d never treated her as anything like a family should.)
That could potentially get messy if kids from two clans decided they wanted babies together, but Kiba’s pretty sure arrangements could be worked out. He’s nothing if not an optimist, and he has plenty of distantly related ilk or whatever running around with their mummies’ last name and their daddies’ last name, and if civilians manage to live with it, why the hell shouldn’t shinobi take a leaf out of their book?
But - he’s been forced to acknowledge - maybe it’s just because it’s the Inuzuka. After all, Kiba’s thought about it, sure, but it’s not as if he ever asked his friends about it.
Which brings him nicely to his last point.
-
Kiba relaxes minutely into his sleep, half-unconsciously, when a soft presence patters into the tent. Hinata’s scent is slightly sharper, muskier than before he’d left, from the hints still clinging to her soap-smelling skin.
If Kiba remembered this tomorrow, he’d certainly find more resemblances between her scent right now and her cousin’s than usual, the heavy tang of sex shared between two lovers, but Kiba won’t remember.
Tomorrow he won’t remember but tonight he relaxes and curls closer to Akamaru, who makes that almost whine that means he agrees through his sleep, and now they’re going to sleep more fitfully than before.
Tomorrow he won’t remember but tonight he knows Hinata was with pack.
-
It’s in his guts, mostly.
24. Crush
"Aren't you happy Naruto is back?" Neji breathes into Hinata's ear, as he moves above her. Her legs wrap, convulsing, around his waist, and push him further into her, as if he was about to go and leave.
A hitch in her breath is Hinata's only answer. Almost three years since he left Konoha, of course she'll be happy he is. So is Neji.
"Did you go see him?" he continues, in the same tone. He doesn't care that his hair has fallen down his shoulders and is getting tangled with hers, spread like a fan on the white pillow.
"Yes," she moans.
Impulsively, he gives a long lick on her neck, and she jerks under him with a loud gasp. Neji very briefly wonders if she's fantasising about Naruto right now, but he hopes it isn't the case.
Here is the real question. He fears he already knows the answer, but he asks anyway.
"Did you tell him how you feel?"
Hinata is trembling under him.
"No," she gasps.
Her legs tighten around him and her arms go around his neck so he continues breathing into the heavy air close to her neck. He gives in, though he is somewhat tempted to up and leave, this time, because when will she learn that she has to tell him someday, if she wants something to happen?
But Neji is selfish, and at the same time he can't help the hint of relief that she didn't speak. Otherwise she would be with Naruto, and not with him.
25. Stammer
"Some p-people, however, b-be-l-lieve th-that- please Neji-niisan yes!"
Hinata could barely make sense of what she was reciting. Her brain had turned to mush with Neji's ministrations, his clever fingers playing with her folds, and when his teeth grazed a nipple, adding an edge, she couldn't stop - didn't think about - the words that tumbled out of her in short gasps.
His hands and mouth were replaced by aching disappointment as he removed them, sitting upright in a rustle of fabric. She wondered if she was imagining his low, exasperated sigh.
"No, Hinata-sama," he said patiently. "What did we say?"
Looking down, she licked her lips as she distanced herself from her tingling body and rewound the past minutes in her mind. She winced when she realised what she'd done wrong.
"That I can't stammer," she muttered unhappily. She shifted, willing her body to forget the fingers that had been penetrating her steadily - oh kami, it was no use.
Neji nodded. "Yes," he agreed, raising a forefinger, sticky with her juices, to stroke the underside of her breast.
She clamped furiously down on the urge to start whining that he please take her now, knowing from experience that it would do no good, and hating him for his self-control. He was a fifteen-year-old male; it was scandalously unfair that she was the only one uncontrollably twitching and moaning there.
"What are you going to do, then?"
"I will not - stammer anymore," Hinata said primly, only just stopping the gasp that threatened to escape when he rubbed her hardened nipple with his thumb.
"That would be a start," Neji agreed coolly.
-
Reciting prepared speeches required a few weeks of 'training' before Neji seemed to be satisfied enough with her progress that he presented her with another type of exercise.
"What are your plans concerning Hyuuga Yumi?"
In a way she had more warnings, since asking the questions required Neji to pause in the activities his mouth was engaged in, and the distraction was thus less severe than it otherwise could be.
In most ways however, it was absolute torture and Hinata wished to die, not necessarily in the good way. (Or at least she did when she had regained enough of her brain cells.)
Unlike the speeches, which she'd learn by heart before speaking them while Neji tried to be as disruptive as possible, the questions were never prepared, and she was in, every time, for a world of unpleasant coming-back from her sexual haze. The mental gymnastics involved in switching back from 'yes-yes-yes' as Neji's tongue was sliding on her clit in the pattern she liked best, to 'Hyuuga mindset' took a heavy toll on her arousal.
If she favoured clinging to her body's sensation instead of focusing on answering him in a semi-sensible fashion, he'd have no qualm about simply leaving her, alone and frustrated. That she did her best was one of the unspoken foundations of whatever it was that they did.
She took a breath and tried to gather everything she knew about Hyuuga Yumi. Before answering, however, she peered at Neji.
"Who is asking?"
He raised an eyebrow, as if suprised, then went on with a tiny jerk of the chin. Hinata doubted anyone but her would have been able to guess the tiny gesture meant he hadn’t thought as far ahead as to wonder about it himself. "The Hyuuga council."
Hinata nodded. As if on cue, Neji's head lowered again, and immediately his tongue flicked between her lips, tasting her.
She tensed but didn't need to close her mind to the waves of pleasure he was building in her the way she'd had to when they'd first moved on to this exercise.
"Yumi-san has been a competent addition to Konoha's chuunin for several years now. She has p-proved her worth in a variety of missions that h-have taken her as f-f-far from t-the village as the South F-frontier of - ah - Fi-fire Country. She has k-kept her h-head in situa-t-tions th-that would otherwise-"
"Answer the question," Neji interrupted harshly, not even waiting a moment before he started attacking her clit again.
"Yes Neji-niisan," she moaned, before regaining control on her voice. "I therefore advocate that sh-she be allowed to j-join active duty outside the realm of Fire Country," she finished with a relieved breath.
Neji twisted his tongue, pressing her clit with an accuracy that made her legs thrash on his shoulders.
"Why should a mere Branch House member be granted such a privilege?" he then asked. "Don't hesitate, this time," he added.
As far as questions went, that was an easy one, but Hinata could not refrain from groaning. She had hoped it'd have been enough.
-
After a while, Hinata barely needed to devote any attention to political chitchat to be able to react swiftly and appropriately - and with minimal stammering.
None of it, however, made her feel quite as smug as…
He pushed inside her, arms braced on each side of her while they kissed fiercely, her arms around his neck, one hand fisted in his hair. Her muscles clenched around his erection.
"Hin-nata-sama," he groaned in her mouth. "D-don't-"
She proceeded to viciously bite his lip, effectively cutting him short and gloating inwardly.
Good news are that I have Internet at home.
INTERNET AT HOME.
:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Title: NejiHina Smut Themes 21-25
Author: runespoor7
Rating: NC-17
Summary: seventh set of smutty drabbles.
Notes: The legend alluded to in 23. Pack is an Egyptian mythological tale.
21. Books
The Head of the Hyuuga, on coming back home that evening after a nice afternoon spent reassuring three different Hyuugas on their chances to pass the chuunin exam, giving them a lists of jutsus and people they should check out if they wished to improve in the remaining five weeks, listening to her sister rant with too-bright eyes about how insufferable Hinata’s Inuzuka teammate was, and leaving for the Yamanaka flowershop where she discovered Ino had already dragged Kiba and was forcefully pushing into his arms the enormous bouquet he would need if he ever wanted Hanabi to take his invitation to date seriously, found herself meeting with a rather pissed-off cousin.
He was frowning in a way that meant that, had he been anyone else, he would have been pacing furiously the length of her room with his brows furrowed and mumbling darkly all the while.
Being Neji, he just looked a little more frosty than would be considered normal.
Hinata smiled at him when he looked sharply up at her as she entered the room, still unable to get over the fact that hers was one of the few places a grumpy, slightly murderous Neji would choose to go.
She lingered a moment in the doorway, unsure about how to ask Neji what bothered him. After a few seconds of debate, she selected to go to the kitchen and make them tea. She was rather cold and it would give Neji a few minutes to gather his wits; it’d be much less aggressive than assaulting him with questions when she’d barely been back long enough to take off her sandals.
He joined her at the same time as the water started to shiver. She let him mull in the kitchen doorway, stopping the fire under the pot and looking around for cups that could qualify as clean.
Neji caught both as she extended her hand toward a couple, inwardly sighing as to their state, and turned the water on. Hinata watched him wash the two cups methodically, with as much perfectionism as he put in every area of his life, and turned away to get the tea leaves, hiding a smile.
“My team lacks focus,” he finally deadpanned. He seemed to be mostly adressing the cups.
Hinata waited for the other shoe to drop. Everyone knew it was to be hoped that training wasn’t the first thing on a genin’s mind, and if not, severe questions had to be asked; at the same time, of course, they were supposed to take it seriously all the same.
Up until that point, she’d never had an inkling that Neji’s genins were terrible slackers. On the contrary, she’d always found two of them more driven than many (and in a good way, at that); as for the last, she possessed a healthy share of the Inuzuka competitive streak. Hinata tended to think most of Neji’s trouble with them stemmed precisely from it.
Now, what could have happened to make Neji-
“I had to take a porn book from one of them. One of those Icha Icha books,” Neji added.
Cautiously, Hinata set the tea on the tiny table as she considered her next words. Finally, she decided for the obvious and cautiously neutral.
“Which one?”
Neji’s hand made a stabbing motion. “The boy.”
Hinata nodded for herself, wondering how she should present her next question.
“I wonder if it isn’t one of the girls who gave it to him,” he went on. “Which makes it almost worse.”
His voice contained a hint of morbid humour. Hinata privately admitted that the situation didn’t lack a certain irony; normally, when a genin was introduced to the world of Konoha pornography industry, the team’s girl was the last to be suspected. However, Neji’s team was made of two girls and one boy; a non-traditional composition that meant all bets were off.
...Actually, there was a good chance such had been the case.
Neji repeated the stabbing motion at the cup he was rinsing for approximately the fifth time.
“And what did you do with it?” she finally ventured. The casual tone of her voice was belied by the thumping of her heart.
“I took it from him,” of course, his tone carried the meaning over well enough. “It’s in the living room.”
“Ah,” Hinata said quietly.
“Why are you ask- Hinata-sama?”
Neji’s tense voice reached Hinata’s ears at the moment her gaze zeroed on the slim orange cover. Only registering Neji’s vague wariness in the most distant way, she went back into the kitchen, skimming through the contents.
He was looking at her with something akin to horror.
Smiling, she raised the book, a finger between two pages to mark her place. “Did you read it?”
After an eternity spent weighing his words, Neji finally bit out, “No, I did not.”
Hinata’s smile didn’t falter.
She took two more steps toward him.
Neji didn’t move from where he was standing, his back against the sink.
“Then we’ll do it together, don’t you think?”
22. Phone
“I’m... wearing the purple blouse you like, and a pair of black pants,” Hinata says in the walkie-talkie. Her cheeks are quickly turning a sunset shade of pink. “Hum, my hair is undone... And-and you?”
She stays silent for a handful of seconds. On the other side of the bar, the target is still laughing with Neji. He has just put his hand on Neji’s arm, and Neji’s green eyes have shown no sign of surprise.
“Are you thinking of me?” she whispers.
She avoids looking at Naruto; if Kiba’s expression is any indication, he must be on the verge of choking on his beer, and Hinata is trying to avoid attracting attention. Neji is tilting his body slightly toward the man.
“Tell me what you’re doing.”
Neji is smiling; Hinata’s body goes rigid for a moment when she spots the man’s fingers wrapping around his wrist, and the hard angle of the walkie-talkie start digging into the flesh of her palm. She forces her clutch to relax.
On impulse, she whispers, “Don’t lock the door.”
She averts her eyes from Kiba as well, now.
“Don’t-” she closes her eyes “-come until I tell you.”
She manages not to stammer the word, even with Ino gaping on the other end of the line, even when she knows without seeing that Naruto and Kiba are staring at her, but not without emphasising it.
Neji has unfolded his hands, and now his right hand is falling to rest on the man’s thigh. Hinata refrains the urge to bite down on her lip until she bleeds. She dispells the image of the man blinded by his own blood, his smiling face contorted in pain and horror. She can’t afford to daydream about scenarios that are not allowed to come to pass. They are only supposed to beat him up and steal his money, so that when he finds out the forbidden scroll has disappeared, it looks like he’s been mugged.
“Take your hitai-ite off.” Her voice is a bit breathless but it comes off as an order.
The man’s eyes are crinkled into a smile as he says something closer to Neji’s ear than should be considered entirely proper, and in that moment Neji looks back at them. At her. Neji’s eyes are green but his gaze is the same.
Hinata swallows.
A second later, the man is dropping a handful of coins on the table. He doesn’t help Neji off his seat, but when they leave the bar, he has his hand on the small of Neji’s back. Hinata fights off the need to rip it off him.
“Let’s go,” Hinata says before she snaps the communication off; Ino has been ready for five minutes now.
Now the trap is set and the fish has taken the bait, everything is urging her to not waste even one second. She doesn’t think it’s just the mission that is pressing her to go faster.
“Wow,” Naruto is the first to snap back to his senses, while they’re leaving their stools, “what was that all about?”
He doesn’t sound puzzled; more amused, grinning widely as if he thought Hinata had just pulled the best joke ever and he just wanted to be let on it, so he could guffaw at the universe. When she glances at him, Hinata sees the sparkle in his eyes; and also the darker flame burning beneath, like an understanding he can’t utter.
Hinata acknowledges it; the target - dead man she is to let live - has strange slit eyes, metallic like gold, outlined in black, and a low voice rumbling with hissing echoes.
“It was the only thing I could think of,” she says.
“Phone sex as an excuse to communicate,” Kiba mutters behind her, “I’ve got to remember that one.”
But Hinata already isn’t listening anymore.
23. Pack
Konoha has many words to describe a close-knit, loyal group.
People would be surprised - out of Shino, who has similar motivation, and Hinata, who knows him better than he thinks she knows herself - to learn that Kiba, not only knows them all, but has also thought about them all.
He remembers his first days in Team Eight, how he and Akamaru used to talk to each other every night at home before they went to sleep, and sometimes even in the daylight, with the others; when they were trying to see if they really, truly, got the concept and what was asked of them.
-
They don’t need to slip out; Neji and Hinata never came back to the tent, continuing instead to train on far long after the sun has set. But they have stopped training now.
They breathe in hushed whispers on the forest ground, their clothes partly removed to reveal skin not so much glowing under the moonlight as it is muted by their quiet surroundings and the careful shadows of the leaves over them.
They don’t need to be silent, but they have to be discreet, if only because Kiba might after all wake up if they were too loud, even if Kurenai is sleeping in Konoha; she’s not the one who needs to learn how to work with Neji, only watching over their last-minute training before the exam. And that, only because she needs to know that Kiba and Neji will be able to function together while Hinata is around.
It was Hinata’s idea, and Hinata who’d been the one telling Kurenai Kiba and she had found a teammate to take the Chuunin exam with them. Since Hinata never said things she didn’t mean, Kurenai had known she would be able to work with Neji. She’d been less sure about Kiba.
And on the whole, she hadn’t been... completely wrong. It is obvious that neither likes the other’s way to interact with Hinata. It is equally obvious that they refuse to let it ruin their chances at passing the exam.
This is their third try.
And so Kiba and Hinata and Neji, in preparation for it, are choosing to spend their last two weeks before they have to make the trip to Hidden Sand slightly out of the village to build up their team routines.
-
Team, they were supposed to be.
And for most of Konoha that’s the simplest unit, really - or hell, in any case that’s the simplest unit when you’re just a genin freshly graduated from the Academy, even if, he supposes, everyone’s got to realise some day or another that there’s really more to it than just that. And if they never did before, then the last few years must have taught all the older folk one thing or two about it, what with Team Seven and the like. And the Sannin.
But it never was the simplest unit for him, not even then.
Was a team just made of the three genins, or did that include the jounin-sensei as well? If so, then why wasn’t the jounin-sensei automatically the team’s leader? Hell, Kurenai never stopped him from claiming he was team leader (except when he was being too loud).
From what he’d gathered, a team was composed of three genins and a jounin-sensei.
Which he could still understand, but wasn’t all that helpful in Team Eight’s particular case, because Akamaru was as much a member of the team as anyone else, and nothing could have kept Kiba’s suspicions about Shino’s bugs at bay after the first two months or so.
And then you had the patchwork teams that were put together just for the one mission, depending on people’s aptitudes and other missions blablabla. Those were actually the less difficult to understand for Kiba, because they were just about work and with none of the half-philosophical half-feeling-in-his-guts that gave him raging headaches if he spent too long on it.
But okay, alright, team. Team Eight. He didn’t understand the general rules, but he got Team Eight.
-
Neji and Hinata shouldn’t actually need to get even more training and sparring than they already have, but they do, they always do because Hinata is not as good as Neji and she will not stop trying until she reaches her maximum and she cannot do any better. (Until she dies.)
Everyone knows this about Hinata who knows anything about her, and it doesn’t raise any suspicion, only vague grumbling from Kiba before he decides to go to bed and leave them to their Jyuuken, and he throws a vaguely dirty look Neji’s way. He’s never completely forgiven Neji for what he did during that chuunin exam, and he’s never completely forgiven himself that he wasn’t in the stands supporting her at the time.
But now they’re not training anymore.
Their tongues are battling with one another, and they’re rolling a little on the ground, with their limbs and clothes entangled, and Hinata’s fingers are on Neji’s thighs, and Neji’s hair brushes against Hinata’s breasts, and fabric is getting a little in the way, but not enough to distract them.
-
Family, okay, that was easy. Everyone knows that one.
(So o-kay, sometimes it’s not as clear-cut as he’d first imagined it’d be, because yeah, remember Team Seven? Yeah well, at least two of their number had really, really got issues on family. And that was without even getting into the Sai thing, because Kiba wasn’t sure he wanted to tackle the problem.
And that seems to bring another category, called friends, if only in Team Seven’s case, but Kiba’s since long decided figuring in which pre-prepared neat little box to put Team Seven isn’t worth the raging headache, yeah, that one.
Besides, Team Seven seems to have a sort of problem with boxes. As in, make them all explode.
And before that, needing to fit said boxes or die trying, as exemplified by Sasuke getting into that bucket a lifetime ago, the closest thing to a metaphor Kiba ever heard about actually happening in real life.
Not that Kiba doesn’t see where they come from, per se (where they’re going to end up is another story, but there’s nothing he can do about it, so...), but it’d have saved him a lot of uncertainty and bleeding existential brainstorming when he was a teen if they had been ever so slighty less Team Sevenish.
Kiba’s not really geared toward angst as it is, so it’d stayed as brainstorming.
Moving on.)
Right, family. But even then, family’s actually not that clear-cut, because in quite a lot of cases (such as Kiba’s, for that matter), it runs into something that should logically be the same bloody thing, but it’s not, otherwise there wouldn’t be a different word for it.
-
They stop a moment to get their breath back, breathing in the same air and looking straight into one another’s eyes. Neji is on top at the moment, his weight resting down in a way that both of them find rather nice, warm and secure.
They are gazing at each other and then he leans slowly, slowly, and she opens her lips and raises her chin before he even completes the motion, and they are kissing in a manner that is more deliberate, more focused, slow and heavy with meaning. The time for fooling around has passed.
Slowly, he positions himself at her entrance as she places her hands on his chest.
The open shirt falls around them like curtains, and Hinata is reminded of legends from far-away countries as he leans on her like the sky over his sister the earth and she parts her legs to meet him, mounts and vales folding and trembling, and she bites her lip when he enters her, fills her until there is no other place in the world she belongs to; Neji is reminded, once more, that she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen and he probably (doubtessly) doesn’t deserve bedding stars fallen into his sheets, the moon still in their eyes and night tangled in their hair, but she’s so warm and inviting and everytime he pushes into her he thinks he’s going to die.
-
Clan. There, you have it.
Probably the biggest headache of all if Kiba was one of the higher-ups and breaking his mind into tiny tiny circles to get over the Uchiha, the Hyuuga, and, oh yeah, the Uchiha again, but personally Kiba doesn’t give much more than a rat’s arse about it. Or two, if you insist. Personally, he’s quite content with going with the official policy: if something bears a certain last name, then it’s from the clan with the same name.
That’s what clans are supposed to be about.
(And, sure, they weren’t family. Because while you could, technically, call that bastard Hiashi Hinata’s father, you’d have to be pretty cynical to go and call the Hyuuga her family. They’d never treated her as anything like a family should.)
That could potentially get messy if kids from two clans decided they wanted babies together, but Kiba’s pretty sure arrangements could be worked out. He’s nothing if not an optimist, and he has plenty of distantly related ilk or whatever running around with their mummies’ last name and their daddies’ last name, and if civilians manage to live with it, why the hell shouldn’t shinobi take a leaf out of their book?
But - he’s been forced to acknowledge - maybe it’s just because it’s the Inuzuka. After all, Kiba’s thought about it, sure, but it’s not as if he ever asked his friends about it.
Which brings him nicely to his last point.
-
Kiba relaxes minutely into his sleep, half-unconsciously, when a soft presence patters into the tent. Hinata’s scent is slightly sharper, muskier than before he’d left, from the hints still clinging to her soap-smelling skin.
If Kiba remembered this tomorrow, he’d certainly find more resemblances between her scent right now and her cousin’s than usual, the heavy tang of sex shared between two lovers, but Kiba won’t remember.
Tomorrow he won’t remember but tonight he relaxes and curls closer to Akamaru, who makes that almost whine that means he agrees through his sleep, and now they’re going to sleep more fitfully than before.
Tomorrow he won’t remember but tonight he knows Hinata was with pack.
-
It’s in his guts, mostly.
24. Crush
"Aren't you happy Naruto is back?" Neji breathes into Hinata's ear, as he moves above her. Her legs wrap, convulsing, around his waist, and push him further into her, as if he was about to go and leave.
A hitch in her breath is Hinata's only answer. Almost three years since he left Konoha, of course she'll be happy he is. So is Neji.
"Did you go see him?" he continues, in the same tone. He doesn't care that his hair has fallen down his shoulders and is getting tangled with hers, spread like a fan on the white pillow.
"Yes," she moans.
Impulsively, he gives a long lick on her neck, and she jerks under him with a loud gasp. Neji very briefly wonders if she's fantasising about Naruto right now, but he hopes it isn't the case.
Here is the real question. He fears he already knows the answer, but he asks anyway.
"Did you tell him how you feel?"
Hinata is trembling under him.
"No," she gasps.
Her legs tighten around him and her arms go around his neck so he continues breathing into the heavy air close to her neck. He gives in, though he is somewhat tempted to up and leave, this time, because when will she learn that she has to tell him someday, if she wants something to happen?
But Neji is selfish, and at the same time he can't help the hint of relief that she didn't speak. Otherwise she would be with Naruto, and not with him.
25. Stammer
"Some p-people, however, b-be-l-lieve th-that- please Neji-niisan yes!"
Hinata could barely make sense of what she was reciting. Her brain had turned to mush with Neji's ministrations, his clever fingers playing with her folds, and when his teeth grazed a nipple, adding an edge, she couldn't stop - didn't think about - the words that tumbled out of her in short gasps.
His hands and mouth were replaced by aching disappointment as he removed them, sitting upright in a rustle of fabric. She wondered if she was imagining his low, exasperated sigh.
"No, Hinata-sama," he said patiently. "What did we say?"
Looking down, she licked her lips as she distanced herself from her tingling body and rewound the past minutes in her mind. She winced when she realised what she'd done wrong.
"That I can't stammer," she muttered unhappily. She shifted, willing her body to forget the fingers that had been penetrating her steadily - oh kami, it was no use.
Neji nodded. "Yes," he agreed, raising a forefinger, sticky with her juices, to stroke the underside of her breast.
She clamped furiously down on the urge to start whining that he please take her now, knowing from experience that it would do no good, and hating him for his self-control. He was a fifteen-year-old male; it was scandalously unfair that she was the only one uncontrollably twitching and moaning there.
"What are you going to do, then?"
"I will not - stammer anymore," Hinata said primly, only just stopping the gasp that threatened to escape when he rubbed her hardened nipple with his thumb.
"That would be a start," Neji agreed coolly.
-
Reciting prepared speeches required a few weeks of 'training' before Neji seemed to be satisfied enough with her progress that he presented her with another type of exercise.
"What are your plans concerning Hyuuga Yumi?"
In a way she had more warnings, since asking the questions required Neji to pause in the activities his mouth was engaged in, and the distraction was thus less severe than it otherwise could be.
In most ways however, it was absolute torture and Hinata wished to die, not necessarily in the good way. (Or at least she did when she had regained enough of her brain cells.)
Unlike the speeches, which she'd learn by heart before speaking them while Neji tried to be as disruptive as possible, the questions were never prepared, and she was in, every time, for a world of unpleasant coming-back from her sexual haze. The mental gymnastics involved in switching back from 'yes-yes-yes' as Neji's tongue was sliding on her clit in the pattern she liked best, to 'Hyuuga mindset' took a heavy toll on her arousal.
If she favoured clinging to her body's sensation instead of focusing on answering him in a semi-sensible fashion, he'd have no qualm about simply leaving her, alone and frustrated. That she did her best was one of the unspoken foundations of whatever it was that they did.
She took a breath and tried to gather everything she knew about Hyuuga Yumi. Before answering, however, she peered at Neji.
"Who is asking?"
He raised an eyebrow, as if suprised, then went on with a tiny jerk of the chin. Hinata doubted anyone but her would have been able to guess the tiny gesture meant he hadn’t thought as far ahead as to wonder about it himself. "The Hyuuga council."
Hinata nodded. As if on cue, Neji's head lowered again, and immediately his tongue flicked between her lips, tasting her.
She tensed but didn't need to close her mind to the waves of pleasure he was building in her the way she'd had to when they'd first moved on to this exercise.
"Yumi-san has been a competent addition to Konoha's chuunin for several years now. She has p-proved her worth in a variety of missions that h-have taken her as f-f-far from t-the village as the South F-frontier of - ah - Fi-fire Country. She has k-kept her h-head in situa-t-tions th-that would otherwise-"
"Answer the question," Neji interrupted harshly, not even waiting a moment before he started attacking her clit again.
"Yes Neji-niisan," she moaned, before regaining control on her voice. "I therefore advocate that sh-she be allowed to j-join active duty outside the realm of Fire Country," she finished with a relieved breath.
Neji twisted his tongue, pressing her clit with an accuracy that made her legs thrash on his shoulders.
"Why should a mere Branch House member be granted such a privilege?" he then asked. "Don't hesitate, this time," he added.
As far as questions went, that was an easy one, but Hinata could not refrain from groaning. She had hoped it'd have been enough.
-
After a while, Hinata barely needed to devote any attention to political chitchat to be able to react swiftly and appropriately - and with minimal stammering.
None of it, however, made her feel quite as smug as…
He pushed inside her, arms braced on each side of her while they kissed fiercely, her arms around his neck, one hand fisted in his hair. Her muscles clenched around his erection.
"Hin-nata-sama," he groaned in her mouth. "D-don't-"
She proceeded to viciously bite his lip, effectively cutting him short and gloating inwardly.