Hello, readers~! Welcome to a short, fun little fic I've decided to put up before I put all my energy into my next big story. I've been waiting patiently for the inspiration to sit down and write out another NaruHina fic, and this idea really resonated with me. I've been super excited to get it started, and here it is, for you all to enjoy. :3

This will be a three-part story that will be complete by the end of this week. The first chapter is going up today (of course), the second will definitely be going up Wednesday morning, and hopefully, I'll have the last chapter complete and ready to post by Friday morning. If not, definitely by the weekend. Tell me what you think, guys!


NaUzu707 has invited you to a private video chat.

ACCEPT REJECT

The digital chime of Hinata's laptop had drawn her attention immediately after stepping out of her steamy shower into the cool comfort of her dorm room again, and the first couple of words of the chat request filling her screen were all it took for her heart to roll nervously in her chest.

NaUzu707, and the face behind the username, Naruto Uzumaki, had been a common sight and a frequent companion of Hinata's since the both of them joined a freshman "study-buddy" program designed for new students at Konoha University to not only start building relationships early, but to help their fellow freshmen out with the hard work that came with college life, socially as well as educationally.

Her interactions with Naruto were largely refreshing. The help they gave each other in the first month of messages and meet-ups was more than Hinata had ever received in her last year of high school, and Naruto's sunny personality staved off her instinctive urge to give up on an assignment whenever she came across something hard or out of her scope.

Their combined efforts didn't make their classes any less daunting and difficult, but the grades they got spoke for themselves. Seeing the proud smile on his face and the emotion displayed in his texts whenever they showed and told each other about good grades on recent assignments was an inspiring boost to Hinata's confidence.

With both of them caught in the high of success, they didn't notice at first just how close they were getting. Hinata was so happy about her A's that she didn't mind the close hugs they shared, the fleeting breaths on each other's necks, or the excitement with which Naruto would take her hand and bring her to the quaint little Ichiraku's down the street from campus. She didn't notice the implications of them walking and talking together between classes, having lunch or dinner together with books and notes between then as well as food, or even inviting each other into their rooms to study in a more comfortable environment than the stuffy library.

The both of them were completely oblivious to the signs, until just a short week ago, while the two of them were studying foreign language together in Naruto's dorm one evening. Hinata wasn't even sure what had happened. One moment, they were sitting on his bed, teaching each other how to position their tongues in order to trill their r's. The next moment, his tongue was in her mouth, teaching her a very different type of oral technique.

The kiss wasn't bad at all. In spite of the surprisingly intrusive organ dancing clumsily against her own, the motions of his soft lips against hers were as gentle as if he was massaging her mouth with his own. Their tongues playing between their mouths caused well-hidden, untapped lust to burst from her heart like a hot geyser. His hands had touched her reddening cheeks, drifted cautiously through her long, straight hair, gripped her shoulders gently to pull her closer and deepen their connection.

Caught off-guard, helpless to the sudden emotions clouding her mind, Hinata was receptive, and timidly provocative as well. Her trembling hands mirrored his own, feeling through his messy blond locks and tracing across the whisker-like lines across his comparatively clean face. She closed her eyes and lost herself. She moved as he moved. She kicked off her shoes and curled her toes as he tugged her into his lap and hugged her close and deepened their kiss and gripped her hair and clawed gently up and down her back and pulled her chest close against his and-

Wait…

No.

Stop.

All at one time, her clarity returned, and fear crashed down upon her like an angry wave against a seaside cliff. She opened her pale eyes wide and tried to pull her lips away, at just the wrong time. Naruto's large warm hand rose to cup the back of her head again to hold her closely, warmly, affectionately against his lustful body.

Stop!

She was terrified. Her grip tightened on his shoulders, hoping that it would make him uncomfortable enough to inquire. It only made him hotter. He was oblivious, thinking her sudden roughness meant he should respond in turn. He kissed her harder, held her tighter with one hand while the other drifted down her back to take a bold handful of her denim-covered rear.

Stop it!

The powder keg burst. Hinata let a muffled yell loose against his lips and leaped from his lap in a fit of desperate aggressive energy, before winding back and slapping him hard across his handsome face. The haunting sound of the impact was so crisp and perfect that just thinking about how much it must have hurt made Hinata cringe.

Naruto's head had snapped to the side, and he was so stunned that at first, he couldn't right himself. But after a moment, he turned back, giving Hinata an incredulous and confused wide-eyed stare, totally lost for words. Hinata's own face was awash with tears of immediate panic and regret as she covered her mouth with her offending hand.

"I-I have to go! Naru- I-I'm so sorry, Naruto! I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" she sobbed as she grabbed her shoes and fled the room. She caught a glimpse of Naruto out of the corner of her eye, reaching out for her as she turned toward his door. She heard his muffled voice call out her name after she slammed the door behind her. She ignored every odd look she received as she ran as fast as she could, barefoot, out of that living hall and back across campus toward her own. She was relieved beyond belief that Sakura wasn't in the room at the time, so that no one could hear her collapse onto her bed and cry into her pillow until the sun went down.

A week had passed since then, Hinata had not spoken with or seen Naruto since. Sakura wasn't at all helpful. After tearfully explaining the situation to her, her pink-haired roommate dismissed Naruto as a horny idiot who tried to take advantage of her, going so far as to offer to report him to the disciplinary office. Hinata told her not to, but Sakura was so hotheaded and sisterly protective that Hinata remained even more terrified that Sakura would report Naruto anyway and get him into undue trouble.

She missed him dearly. She missed his sunny smile, his loud voice, and his upbeat attitude, and she missed the help and encouragement he provided. The whole week following the incident was awful, and Hinata had relapsed hard into her defeatist mentality, not even showing up to half of her classes, and leaving early in half the others, to return to her dorm and shed frustrated tears about how impossible her studies were.

She'd just left the shower, trying to calm herself and relax her mind after confronting a mountain of related rates, tangent lines, and derivatives on her overdue calculus homework and suffering another nervous breakdown, when she saw his chat request, the third time he had reached out to her since the incident. He'd sent her a text the day after it happened, and she hadn't read it yet. He tried to start a chat with her earlier that week while she was looking up articles on logic and fallacies, and she closed her computer and failed to finish that assignment.

She was terrified of talking to him again. She was less terrified of what he'd say to her and more terrified of what this meant for their relationship moving forward. Hinata had yet to piece together her own feelings about what happened. It still made her uncomfortable just thinking about what they did, how good and hot it felt… There was that nervous roll of her heart again.

Hinata gulped. She rationalized in her head that she was dripping wet and only dressed in a towel. Now was a legitimately bad time to talk. With that rushed excuse hogging the forefront of her thoughts, she leaned forward and hovered her mouse over the 'REJECT' button.

… … …

There was a long half-minute of hesitation before Hinata realized she couldn't bring herself to reject him. Whatever she felt about Naruto and what happened on his bed a week ago, it refused to be ignored, and it refused to ignore him any longer. Hinata sighed and turned the computer so that its webcam faced the dorm room door, away from herself and her dresser drawers, before mousing over and clicking 'ACCEPT'.

"…Hello? You there, Hinata?"

Hearing his voice, even in the shoddy, mechanical quality of her laptop's speakers, warmed her heart, and she answered, trying to be loud enough for him to hear clearly.

"Y-Yes, I am. I'm here, Naruto. I just… I just got out of the shower, s-so… I'm not dressed right now. T-That's why you can't see me. Can you give me just a minute to dry off and dress, please?"

"Oh! Yeah! Sorry I caught you at a bad time… Take as much time as you need, Hinata, I'll be here."

There was a meaningful tone to Naruto's words that Hinata couldn't decipher. She felt that fear and nervousness rising like bile in her throat, but she bravely gulped it down and nodded. "Okay…"

The next five minutes were mostly silent, filled only with the sounds of her bare feet on cool tile, the rumble of her drawers opening and closing, and the whispering rustle of her soft t-shirt and pajama pants as she slipped them on after toweling off. Hinata had to summon up another spot of bravery as she sighed and took a seat at her desk, turning her computer back toward herself, and meeting eyes with him for the first time in a week.

"Hey," they both started at the same time, and smirked lightly at each other as a result.

"Sorry," they mirrored each other again, sharing a light laugh this time.

"You go-" They were about to go three for three, but both of them paused, waiting for the other to speak up.

"…You go first," Hinata finally said quietly with a nod.

Naruto nodded back and closed his eyes, taking a deep, slow breath.

"I'm… so, so sorry, Hinata," he started, running his fingers through his hair. "I'm sorry about last week, and what I did. It… It was just stupid, and I shouldn't have done it. I deserved that smack, really, and you have every right to hate me and not want to talk to me after that."

"I don't hate you, Naruto," she quickly responded, her brows furrowing as she felt tears welling in her eyes at the sight of Naruto's sorrowful expression. His sunny disposition had clearly been darkened by storms, clouding up and darkening his normally bright blue gaze. "And you didn't… you didn't do anything wrong."

"If it wasn't wrong, things wouldn't have turned out like they did…" Naruto responded, looking down. "I tried to push things too far. I should've known you wanted to stop, instead of…"

Naruto paused, and the pain in his eyes was welling to the surface as well. Naruto didn't show his pain and sadness through tears, it was written all over his handsome and expressive face. Meanwhile, Hinata couldn't stop the tears from flowing no matter how hard she tried. She wanted to reach into her screen and touch his face so badly…

"W-What… What started it, Naruto? What made you… want to kiss me?" she asked gently. "Please look at me, Naruto…"

She stared into her screen until his eyes turned back to meet hers, and he opened and closed his mouth for several moments, groping for the right words to explain himself with.

"I, well… Y'know… I guess I… I always thought you were pretty. Your eyes are great and everything about you is so neat and perfect. But we were both struggling in school, y'know? I didn't want to make a move. I didn't want to distract you or me from what we needed to do. So I just… I pushed those thoughts down, I guess. I tried to forget about how pretty you were and focus on helping you and getting help from you, so we don't flunk out of college our first year…"

Hinata wiped her eyes and kept silent to listen, unable to keep the blush from blooming brighter and brighter on her face with each word he spoke.

"But that time… a week ago… I dunno what came over me, Hinata. I just… looked up and saw you, and you looked so pretty trying to roll your tongue and make that weird 'r' sound… what's it called?"

"Trilling?"

"Yeah, that. Seeing you trilling just looked so… h-hot. I just lost it. God, you must think this sounds so creepy, I'm sorry…"

Naruto sighed and shook his head, looking away again. Hinata was flustered beyond belief, her heart pounding like a bass drum in her chest. No one had ever said anything like that to her before. Hearing it from anyone else probably would have made Hinata uncomfortable enough to just drop everything right there, but hearing it from Naruto…

"I-I don't think it's creepy, Naruto," she assured him. "I liked the kiss, I just… I was overwhelmed with feelings I didn't know I had. It was all happening so fast and I got scared."

"And you didn't like me getting all rough and grabby," he added, still looking away.

Hinata pursed her lips, wiping her eyes again and shrugging. "Y-Yeah, that, too… But now it's my turn to apologize, Naruto. I didn't mean to hit you, especially not that hard. I… I thought you would hate me for that."

Naruto quickly looked at the screen again, his eyes meeting Hinata's as he shook his head rapidly. "Whoa, no way. I don't really hate anyone, and I know I could never hate you for anything, Hinata. You're one of the only people who believes I can make something of myself, and you really have nothing to be sorry for. Heh… I probably would've slapped me, too, and not cared whether or not I hated me afterwards. The fact that you care just shows how awesome you are, Hinata!"

She smiled and rubbed her face as she looked away from the screen, but after a few seconds, Naruto's face returns to its gloomy wariness. "I've been so afraid that you didn't really feel the same way about me as I'm feeling about you. I've had this thought in my head since it happened that you went with it just to, you know, test it out, and you wanted to stop because you realized that you really didn't like me or something."

"That's not true at all, Naruto," Hinata assured him quickly. "I… I've been struggling with my own feelings right now. I-I've been so scared about what would happen now, where would we go from here, because… I really liked what we had, just… being there for each other as study buddies, helping each other out and celebrating our successes, and focusing on my schoolwork is definitely something that needs to take priority. Since that day, I haven't been doing too well…"

"Yeah, me neither," Naruto admitted, before nodding to let Hinata continue.

"I-I've been afraid of asking where do we go from here? W-We… I-I don't think we can go back to the way things were before. There's always going to be those awkward feelings that we're trying to ignore, distracting and upsetting us. But… I also don't know how or if we can… t-take this further…"

Hinata had to pause, briefly flustering herself into derailing her train of thought, but Naruto nodded in understanding. "Hinata, we can still study and help each other out without ignoring our feelings. I mean… we saw each other so often that we were practically dating already."

The cheesy grin he gave her was enough to make her giggle lightly as well, even though the thought of them dating flustered her even more. He did have a point, though, and Hinata felt that slowly, surely, the dark clouds that had been hanging over their heads had begun to disperse. They were smiling and laughing together again. The light was slowly returning to their eyes. But Hinata was still nervous.

"I'm… not really familiar with the whole… dating thing. I've never had a boyfriend."

"Well, neither have I! Er… had a girlfriend, that is," he said, rubbing his head. "But how different can it be from what we've been doing? We've been hanging out and talking and studying and enjoying each other's company. All that'll be different is that we'd kiss every once in a while, right? If you wanted, that is. You don't have to answer right away, either, y'know? If you need time to think, that's cool."

'Kiss' was a very broad and encompassing term for what Hinata knew and suspected dating couples do together. She'd been in high school, and she'd read the news. She'd heard about enough wild parties, date rapes, and unplanned pregnancies to have some idea of what 'kissing' could lead to.

Hinata considered once again that if this was any other guy, she'd be far too anxious, and might hardly trust him to communicate with him for this long, let alone entertain the idea of dating him, kissing him, exposing herself physically and emotionally to him… But Naruto wasn't like the boys she had to tolerate learning beside in high school.

She felt safe, cared for, when she was around him. She could tell he was genuine. She knew he wouldn't hurt her. And after a week of flailing and drowning in an ocean of tears, doubt and despair, she saw in him a lifeboat, confident that his presence could continue to keep her safe and secure.

"…Alright, Naruto," she told him with an affirmative nod. "I can give us a shot. Just… try to wait to kiss me until after we're done, studying, alright?"

The widest grin Hinata had ever seen spread across Naruto's face. "Yeah! I promise, Hinata! I may not know what I'm doing yet, but I promise I'll be the best boyfriend ever! You better believe it!"

Naruto briefly turned his head away from the screen at the faint noise of his dorm room door opening. There was a soft murmur of a voice some distance away, and Naruto nodded before looking back at the screen again.

"Gotta go, Hinata. There's a floor meeting tonight that I forgot I needed to get to, like, now. Hehe… I'll see you around, okay? Tomorrow at lunch?"

Hinata pursed her lips and nodded her head. "Y-Yeah, that sounds great, Naruto. I'll meet you then. Goodnight."

"Night, girlfriend!" he laughed with yet another goofy smile before logging out of chat.

For a long while, Hinata could only sit and stare at her screen, processing everything she had just heard and said, assuring herself that it all just happened. And once she was secure in that thought, she gently closed her laptop and climbed into bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering, what's going to happen next?


Hope you enjoyed that! Look forward to Wednesday, things start to get a lot steamier. ;3

~M.H.C~

May all your~

Hearts beat with~

Calamity~!

Till Wednesday! :D