Tenten turned beautiful when she was nineteen.
Most of her youth was spent focused on developing her skills as a kunoichi. To her, that meant being a fighter, not the seductress that was embellished in romance novels and the minds of civilians.
Her hands were calloused and rough, she had sun-damaged hair, and her skin was unfashionably tan and freckled. She'd get breakouts on her face and back, she constantly had bruises scattered across her skin, and her limbs outgrew the rest of her body until she looked gangly and ill-proportioned.
While the kunoichi of her age group all seemed to possess some sort of beauty- Hinata with a sort of unconscious grace; Sakura with sweet sincerity; Ino with easy confidence- Tenten was pleased by her plainer features and ability to blend in. Beautiful women were targets, expected to achieve constant, impossible standards. They were invariably under the scrutiny of others, walking a tightrope. Beautiful women weren't allowed to be anything else.
It was during the war that her perception of self changed. Ironically enough, it came at a time when most shinobi focused on the fight, on winning their battles. But Team Gai had always been soldiers, a team meant for straightforward combat. Tenten could handle long battles without rest. She had pushed herself to the limit every day in training for the past decade.
So in her admittedly small amount of free time, she found herself looking for something to do. She was surrounded by shinobi from other villages- "Freeeesh meat" Ino had sung into her ear- so she took a page out of the Yamanaka's book, and tried her hand at flirting.
Her initial pursuits were… unsuccessful, to say the least. Fortunately, she didn't embarrass herself, mainly because her attempts came across as normal conversations.
"Oh, did you get issued a new kunai set? Bet that's nice. Easier to slice open some of those damn clones."
"Ouch, what happened to your shoulder?"
Eventually, she keyed in on the concept of body language. A head tilt, a half smile, and a small quirk of the shoulders could go far in conveying more of her intent. She slipped in a little more husk to her voice, a little more tease in her words.
She reduced a poor chūnin to a stuttering, blushing mess every time he saw her. Graduation, she decided.
After the war, Tenten could have fallen back to her usual routine, but she found she wasn't quite ready to give up her newfound hobby.
Neji and Lee were both utterly thrown by the development. The first time she got someone to buy her a drink, they both watched, astounded.
Lee seemed to think she had learned some new jutsu to trick people.
"Tenten! How did you do that! I did not even see you make any hand signs!"
Neji had just stared at her, shock evident in his pale gaze. She met his eyes a little defiantly. The Hyūga clan was probably much too refined to flirt. He was probably a little repulsed that she had stooped so low as to become a tease.
Well, he could choke. She could get free drinks now, whenever she wanted.
In contrast to Team Gai, Ino was thrilled to hear about it. "Yes, Tenten! Break their shriveled little hearts! RETRIBUTION!"
"Kami, Ino, I'm not trying to break anyone's heart!"
"You say that now, but just wait until you get some crusty, full-of-it motherfucker to cave! Make 'em cry!"
Ino had recently started going steady with Sai. She was utterly, disgustingly happy, but missed her own little "endeavours" that she practiced in her youth.
She took the opportunity to live vicariously through Tenten. "Well, you should step it up! You've got the momentum, so take the time to amp it all up!"
"How- what-"
"Update your look! C'mon!"
Tenten had been dragged through various stores, often stuck holding pieces of merchandise as Ino harangued with different employees. At some point in their venture, Sakura had joined them (Tenten had no idea when, she had lost all concepts of time and space by then) and gleefully thrown several pairs of shoes at Tenten to try on.
She had battled it out with both of them until they allowed her to actually select a few outfits that would suit her, then agreed to lunch before getting back at it. She tuned out the other women as they conversed about work in the hospital- Tenten shattered people's bones, she didn't fix them.
Bored, she shifted her attention over the crowd and smirked inwardly as she met the eye of her stammering chūnin. She tilted her head and quirked her lips as she gave him a small finger wave. He flushed beet red and scurried away.
Next to her, Ino and Sakura were cackling at the interaction. "Damn, Tenten!" Ino chortled. "Leave him a little pride!"
Sakura grinned deviously into her drink. "Imagine what would've happened if she had been dolled up!" That was apparently too much for Ino to handle, and she devolved into giggles, barely managing to choke out "She would've killed him!"
Tenten watched with an arched brow as they all but collapsed in laughter. "Maybe you need some more time off. I'm concerned about your senses of humor."
Ino and Sakura somehow managed to drag out acquiring Tenten's new look over the period of a month. She was going to protest, but then she caught an underlying current of desperation in their actions. The war had taken things from them, and they needed this sense of normalcy. Tenten could give them that.
Neji and Lee still didn't know how to process the changes. Her new hairstyle had nearly killed Lee in his excitement. He had whipped himself into a frenzy, running around her and yelling compliments and questions. At one point he had hoisted her above him and… yodeled.
Thankfully, Neji had rescued her, delivering a sharp rap to Lee's stomach and pulling her away by her waist.
She grinned breathlessly up at him. "Thanks."
He stared at her a moment, before tugging the end of her braid and giving her a small nod.
Lee was upon her again seconds later, prodding at her hair and asking her to give him a braid as well. She grinned teasingly. "All right- braid train! I'll be the caboose, Lee is in the middle, and Neji-"
"No."
"Please, rival! I promise to make you look super cool and youthful!"
"Absolutely not."
Her decision to wear a dress to training sent Neji spiraling into a fit.
"It is not appropriate attire, Tenten!"
"What?! Plenty of kunoichi wear dresses and skirts and do just fine!"
"It's not about them!"
"So it's about me!"
"Obviously!"
"You have a problem with me!"
"I- that's not what I-"
"Point taken, Neji! I'm not allowed to do anything that upsets your Hyūga decorum!"
"For heaven's sake, Tenten, most of your attacks are aerial!"
Tenten stared at him in silence, watching a flush spread across his cheeks as he glared at the ground by her feet. Finally, she muttered "What?"
He wrenched his gaze to hers. "Your attacks are aerial. If you fight in a dress or skirt, people will- they could-" Neji choked around the words.
Tenten found some amusement in the situation, despite her lingering anger. "You think I haven't realized that? I have fishnets on, plus shorts." She hiked up the edge of the dress to show him, but he let out a scandalized sound and tore his eyes away. "Tenten!"
"We've been teammates since we were twelve, Neji! I think it's okay if you see my completely covered legs."
He about-faced and marched away, appalled. She threw up her hands and turned towards her scrolls, deciding to ignore him.
After a tense few days between the two of them, with Lee picking up on their moods but choosing to ignore it, Neji had grown accustomed to her new clothes. He finally admitted, very tersely, that she had ensured she was always appropriately covered.
He did nearly pop a vein when she let Ino pierce her ears. In all fairness, she did lean towards earrings that dangled, which could genuinely be hazardous. She let him have that one, and didn't wear them to their spars.
Neji still scowled when she wore earrings out, but she'd found that they glinted enticingly in low lighting and there was no way she'd give them up.
Over the course of the next few months, Tenten continued to make slight changes to her wardrobe and habits. Sakura bullied her into a skincare routine, which Tenten mainly used because she liked the citrus smell of her face lotion. Lee evidently did too, given his habit of squishing her face in his hands and delicately sniffing her forehead.
When she painted her nails for the first time, Neji had abruptly halted in the middle of their spar, clasping her hand in his and examining her fingers closely. She flushed a little and instinctively jerked away. He let her hand slide from his, murmuring "It looks good." She squeaked out a thank you, face burning, but she refused to contemplate exactly why.
Neji seemed to read something in her expression that amused him. He smirked a little, but thankfully said nothing as he took a position to resume their spar.
One day during their training, Lee literally flexed so hard his sleeves fell off. Tenten laughed herself hoarse.
In typical Lee fashion, he decided to roll with his new wardrobe ("A new look just as you, Tenten!") and spent much of the next few days heavily debating whether to shave his armpits or not.
Tenten went out for drinks with Temari and Sakura one night while the ambassador was in Konoha. Apparently, they had met up on one of Naruto's self-defined "guys' nights", and wound up crashing it.
(Shikamaru certainly didn't seem to mind.)
After watching Tenten and Sakura's increasingly drunken contest of "Get a cutie to buy me a drink", Neji apparently cracked. "If you want free drinks, Tenten, then I'll buy them for you. Stop engaging with all of these strangers."
Sakura jerked her head up from where it was slowly lowering onto the table. "What? Who's engaged?" She blinked at both of them. "You two? I didn't even know you were together!"
Neji gritted out "We aren't." Tenten patted her friend's arm comfortingly. "Nope. Not dating." She wrinkled her nose in thought. "Shikamaru and Temari are, though."
Sakura swiveled in her seat to face the couple. "So they're engaged?"
Neji snapped "No" just as Tenten said "Maybe?", tilting her head and considering the couple in a new light.
"No one's engaged," Neji corrected. They both ignored him, choosing instead to coo over Temari and Shikamaru from afar. He shook his head at them and turned back to his conversation with Shino and Kiba.
A few minutes later, as she and Sakura concluded a very serious discussion on rings ("... shiny." "Yeah!") Tenten had reached the bottom of her glass. She frowned distastefully at it, then remembered what Neji had said earlier.
"Oh!" She turned to him with a happy smile. "Neji! I need a new drink!"
He looked at her empty glass, then frowned at her. "You've had enough."
Tenten was devastated. "But you said you would!" She leaned forward to dig her nose into his shoulder. "Neji!"
"No."
She scowled against the fabric of his shirt. "So you're a liar."
"I suppose so. Get a water."
"Water," she muttered disdainfully. Tenten made no move to sit up, instead resting her forehead on his arm. He smelled nice, especially considering he'd been at a bar all evening.
The rest of the night blurred around her. True to Neji's (stupid) wishes, she didn't have any more alcohol. She was still feeling resentful of him, though, and chose to inconvenience him as much as she could by physically obstructing his arm from moving with the weight of her body.
That'll show him, she thought to herself as he wrapped the same arm around her shoulders and chafed her skin when she started feeling cold. Telling me to drink water.
She kept up her inner tirade as he wrapped her coat around her shoulders while instructing Naruto to walk a drunken and overly confident Sakura home. Tenten had worked herself into a right fit by the time Neji unlocked her apartment and ushered her in with a light touch to her back.
Tenten spun to face him, one hand on her hip and the other prepared to gesture wildly to articulate her point, and found him neatly lining up her shoes on the mat by the door. It was such a Neji-like action that she couldn't help but feel a rush of fondness for her teammate.
Her ire gone, she walked forward and slumped onto his back, sighing into his hair. "Thanks for walking me home, Neji. Even though I'm drunk and slobbery."
He turned to face her. "You're welcome. You should get to bed."
"Yeah. Ugh, Sakura's not even going to be hungover tomorrow. Stupid medic skills."
Neji made a noncommittal noise. She realized she was still hanging limply with his body supporting her. Rather than moving, Tenten lifted her head up to rest her chin on his chest. He frowned down at her disapprovingly, and she reached up to run her thumb along the crease between his brows.
"If you keep making that face, it'll freeze like that," she informed him. He jerked away and frowned even harder. "Bed, Tenten." He turned and walked further into her home.
She stood where he had left her alone, hand slowly lowering as she stared after him. Finally she voiced the concern that had been in the back of her mind since the end of the war.
"Neji… are you upset with me?"
His voice called back from her kitchen, "You did drink a lot, which was in poor judgement."
"Not about the drinking. The… other stuff. The fact that I'm- that I'm acting more feminine."
She chewed her lip as the silence drew on. Finally he walked back into the hallway, drying his hands on a dishtowel. "Why would I be upset about that?"
"I don't know, you tell me. You've been acting weird about it."
"I have not-"
"Yes you have! You get all uppity whenever I talk to someone in a flirty way, and Kami knows you threw and absolute fit when I started wearing training qipao-"
"Don't turn this into something it isn't, Tenten."
"I'm not though!" Tenten was drunk, exhausted, and terrified of his answer. She felt a sting of tears behind her eyes and did her best to suppress it. "You've barely talked to me in the last few weeks! There's no other explanation except that you think I'm becoming some sort of- some sort of whore or something just because I dress up more now!"
"Don't be ridiculous," he snapped.
"Well, I'm so sorry for offending your fucking sense of propriety, Neji." Despite all of her efforts, Tenten felt her eyes starting to water.
"Would you stop talking and let me explain things to you?!" Neji was wringing the dish towel in his hands, muscles tense and anger in his eyes. She glared at him resentfully. All she wanted to do now was go into her room and bawl her eyes out, but Neji was blocking her path.
"I don't think any differently of you, Tenten."
"Bullshit."
"Are you going to let me finish?"
"No." She took a few steps towards him, indicating the door with her thumb. "Leave."
He gaped at her, incredulous. "I'm serious. Get out. I don't want to talk to you."
Mustering himself, he replied quietly, "No."
She glowered at him through eyes that she was sure were red-rimmed with alcohol and tears. He was clearly serious about his intent to remain, so instead she began walking past him towards the bathroom.
Neji caught her wrist just as she had nearly gotten out of arm distance. "You can't start an argument like that and not even allow me to speak."
"I just did." She yanked her arm. "Let go."
"Will you let me talk to you?"
"No." Damn it all, she was starting to cry in front of him. Hopefully he wouldn't notice-
"Tenten?" Damn it all. She turned her face away, but it was too late. He'd already seen her tears spill over.
He drew her closer to himself, and she couldn't muster the willpower to resist.
Neji was utterly astounded to see her crying. His hand locked around her wrist slid up to cup her elbow, and the other hovered in the space in front of her face. He seemed like he was going to lift her chin and force her to face him, but he eventually pulled his hand back. "Tenten, please let me talk."
She stared down at his shirt, refusing to acknowledge him. He continued on anyway.
"Of course I don't think any less of you. You've proven your character to me countless times over." As he was speaking, Neji had been drawing her closer, and she found herself a few inches from touching him.
"I… I have never been very good at expressing myself. I was treating you poorly and didn't even realize it." He finally raised his other hand and slid his fingers under her palm, lifting it from where it was hanging limply at her side. "It's… it's just very different to see you like this. You didn't seem interested in… in this sort of thing, I'm not sure what to call it."
"Ino's been calling it my Sexy Tenten Unveiling." She muttered into his clavicle. Without realizing it, she had pressed herself against him and relaxed. His chin rested on top of her head.
At her comment, he coughed lightly in embarrassment. She smiled and closed her eyes. No way would he say the word "sexy" out loud, especially if she was being described. He would find it wildly inappropriate.
"Be that as it may…" he began. She bit back a laugh and moved her arms to wrap around his waist. Neji paused again, his arms hovering awkwardly in the air for a moment as he struggled with where to place them. He finally settled them over her arms and waist. "It was difficult to reconcile this new image with your old one at first. I let that affect how I treated you, and for that I'm deeply sorry."
"It's alright," Tenten sighed, leaning even further into his embrace. He was supporting nearly all her weight now. "I'm sorry I started an argument and then didn't even let you talk."
The pressure on her head lifted for a moment, before briefly concentrating into one area at her hairline and then returning. "It's fine." Did he- did he just kiss my head?
A wave of dizziness hit her, and she sagged against Neji until her vision righted. Ohhhh drunk. Tenten could hear her teammate calling for her concernedly, but couldn't muster the willpower to respond for a few seconds. Finally she righted herself, reluctantly pulling herself from him. "I'm okay, Neji. I think I just need to sleep."
He nodded, his hands still supporting her at her elbows. "Are you going to be fine on your own?"
"Yes."
"I'm going to go home, then. Please make sure you drink some water. I'll come by in the morning to check on you."
She hoped that her expression wasn't showing the tenderness and gratitude she was feeling. "I- thank you, Neji." Overwhelmed by his thoughtfulness, she quickly flung her arms around his neck and dug her nose into his jaw. If her lips brushed against his face for a moment, well, it couldn't be helped.
Tenten stepped back from him before he could react. She brushed her bangs back from her eyes and gave him a sincere if awkward smile. "Good night."
He smiled back, his eyes open and unguarded. "Good night." He backed a few paces towards the door, then seem to muster something within himself and stopped short. "And the- your new wardrobe- it's-" He paused, obviously struggling, then blurted, "You're beautiful."
They stared at one another a moment. Tenten felt a flush that had nothing to do with alcohol bloom across her face. Neji seemed startled by his own candidacy.
Finally Tenten let out a tiny noise that may have been a thank you. Neji certainly chose to take it as such. He gave her the most uncomfortable nod she had seen out of him since he was fourteen and swiftly exited her apartment, ears burning.
Tenten buried her scarlet face in her hands and sank down to the floor, biting back the raptor-like screech that was rising in the back of her throat.
Oh. My. GOD.
That didn't- that didn't mean anything, did it? Neji was awful at giving compliments. That was just another awkward attempt-
The raptor screech worked its way up her throat and out her nose. She grinned helplessly into her hands. That wasn't just a compliment, and they both knew it. That was a statement of interest and intent.
She'd been so busy exploring this new side to herself that she hadn't noticed Neji steadily working his way closer to her. He'd practically been dating her behind her back.
Tenten brushed her fingers over her hairline and smiled at the ground. She was going to make out with him so hard once she was sober.