Something New
Summary: Everyone gets bored of something eventually, even if they're amazing at it. Some people just need some more convincing. NejiTen bonding, easy camaraderie and gentle humor. Team Gai. Oneshot.
A/N: An edit, because I still have a vague attachment for NejiTen and what was.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto! Yeah!
"Yield."
Her narrowed eyes roll left and pointedly stare elsewhere. Her lips twitch. The question is repeated again, this time with a sharp edge flashed for emphasis.
"Yield."
Quiet. An irritated exhale.
"Fine," she finally snaps, still not looking at him. He removes the simple kunai from her throat, slipping it away as he stands up. She hops to her feet, snagging several dropped pieces of weaponry on her way up. He leans slowly against the only area on a nearby tree trunk not porcupined in metal and closes his white eyes, veins eerily sinking back into his skin. She starts to retrieve her items, starting with the ones draped on the bush nearest to her.
After successfully pulling all of the senbon delicately from the tree trunk Neji was leaning against, she moves on to the multitude of things littered on the floor. "So was I okay with the tonfas?" she asks as she picks up items. He makes a sound that could almost count as a dry chuckle.
"I certainly didn't expect you to throw them at me." At this, she shrugs, but Tenten's unable to keep the smile from her face.
"Well, gotta keep the enemy guessing." She tucks a few kitchen knives safely away into her blank, unraveled scroll held in her hand-knives reserved for battle, only, regardless of their original purpose in carving culinary creations.
"You need more work with them. Your aim was off."
"Yeah, I'll work with them later," she replies off-handedly, now putting away rolling pins.
A brief silence.
"I thought since you had been using kitchen-themed items today that you wouldn't use anything else you would have ordinarily." The phrase "proper weapons" is absent from Neji's vocabulary primarily because he knows that his teammate can use everything and anything with efficient finesse in maiming others.
A grin spreads across her face before she repeats, "Gotta keep the enemy guessing." She picks up a few discarded pots and pans. The trace of a smile ghosts across his face.
"The pans were unexpectedly formidable weapons."
"Yeah, they're pretty heavy. Especially this one," she agrees, hefting up a particularly large black one, checking to make sure it hadn't chipped when she'd been using it as a makeshift mace. Or hatchet. Something like that.
Quiet. Then:
"Hey, Neji?"
He opens his eyes, his gaze following her progress as she settled on the forest floor to sort her scattered chopsticks.
"Don't you ever get bored of using the same style, the same weapons, the same...everything, every single day?" He closes his eyes for a single second. Apparently this is a question that requires deep thought.
"No," he finally says. It is absolute in its certainty. She immediately bursts into a short laugh, her eyes dancing merrily.
"Neji Hyuuga, you are such a liar." A frown line forms between his eyebrows. She laughs again. "Don't give me that look! I know you get bored of using jyuuken and the same weapons every day! Man, you even use the same exact kunai all the time. So predictable."
The frown line digs deeper. "There's nothing boring about my style of-"
"Yes there is," she cuts in.
"Then what is it?" The frown line has settled as naturally as if it were home on his face, and she breaks in her laughter, blinking at his severity in his defense of his style. Well, she supposed that it was what the Hyuuga household has passed down for generations and generations, and she had heard enough of the blood spilled protecting it-personal blood, close and dear to his heart-so though she tried to moderate her tone, she couldn't help the note of bitterness that had weaved in her tone (because after all, in her book, teammates came before anything else, even whom her teammates respected).
"Well, there just doesn't seem to be anything...interesting about it." He opens his mouth to protest but she keeps talking. "Sure, I mean, it's cool to watch, graceful and stuff, but there just isn't anything very exciting about it, you know? Kinda like dancing. Ballet. Classical stuff. Boring."
A muscle in his face twitches. "There's absolutely nothing wrong with classical, venerable tradition. And I suppose you believe throwing various objects isn't boring."
She grins again. "Hey, you said it yourself! You didn't expect me to throw the tonfas instead of straight-out fighting with them." He scowls in response.
"I never meant that as-"
"Well, it doesn't matter if you did or not. My point is...I dunno, why don't you try using something new for once? Change is good." She began sealing her neatly paired chopsticks into a small scroll.
"Not always." He is as stubborn as always.
"Okay, fine." She rolls her eyes skyward. "Change is pretty good most of the time." He raises an eyebrow, so she raises one back at him. "I'm not going any lower than 'most of the time,' got it?"
He shakes his head in mock exasperation at her pettiness. She smiles. "So why don't you start with using these?" Abruptly, Tenten stands and summons two massive axes, grabbing the neatly wrapped handles. "Here, catch!" She throws them gently at him with expert ease, one after the other, watching the gigantic blades spinning slowly in the air towards him. He moves to grab one, catches hold of the handle, and is dragged down with a surprised look on his face. However, he quickly recovers, side-stepping neatly to avoid being crushed by the other one. It thunders into the forest floor, nearly dissecting an unfortunate bug that had thought it'd found a nice new rotting log for a home.
She almost giggles at his expression, checking it in time so his manly ego doesn't get bruised. But she can't keep herself from a daring smile. "Guess you should just practice with one for now, huh?" He glowers at her. "And don't you dare get scratches on my babies!" She walks off to pick up the rest of her weapons, her lips still trembling in repressed mirth.
Ten minutes later, though, she couldn't help but ask. "So how's it going?" At his determined grunt, though, she holds up her hands in defeat, though she's secretly pleased with how much sweat her teammate was approaching this task. "Fine, fine, I'll go pick up the rest of my flour bags..."
A half hour passed, and Tenten finally finished inspecting, cleaning, and tucking away every single one of her darling weapons-with the exception of two-and Neji Hyuuga was not letting up. She sighs with exasperation-what did she expect from the genius of her year, anyway? Stubborn to the end-and ventures a "Hey, I'm done putting stuff away." With no response, she adds an "Aren't you tired yet? We just finished training for three hours..." He doesn't even bother to answer her with a grunt. She leans into a disgruntled hands-on-hips pose. "Okay, fine. Ignore me. That's fine. I'll just go and do something useful while you practice."
With the threat of her leaving him, Neji deigns to grace her with a thoughtful "Nn." between trembling attempts of weightlifting. She takes this as her signal to engage in further simple two-sided conversation.
"So whadaya wanna eat? It's good to eat after training for so long. I'll get take-out for you somewhere when I grab something." He's sunk back into his world of silent solitude, and she makes a face at him. "Well, if I come back with something you hate, just remember it's your fault for not telling me your food preference." She takes off, hollering over her shoulder as she weaves through the Konoha trees. "Just remember that!"
...
"Hey Neji, I'm baaack!" Tenten sails back in to the clearing, fresh greasy goodness in her hands. He exhales in what could be interpreted as petulant before the ground shakes from the force of a massive chunk of iron being set down. Another bug has a traumatic experience. She ignores how he's sweating profusely (the fangirls would never get over it, she knows from personal, terrifying experience) and unveils the take-out with a flourish. Instantly, his expression stonewalls. She scowls at him. "Don't make that face."
"I wasn't making a face," he replies patiently, reaching for the food.
"You are too. That's your 'I find this food repulsive' face," she says conversationally, handing him a pair of chopsticks (not ones for battling!). "You make that face whenever I make you something that tastes bad."
"Really. I hadn't noticed," he deadpans, breaking the received connected chopsticks cleanly in half. Tenten starts on her own food, but not before quirking an eyebrow.
"Stop lying, Neji Hyuuga." In between bites, she continues, "Well. I told you that I was going to get something you hate if you didn't bother to take the time of what, five seconds, to tell me what you wanted. So there. It's your fault."
"You did this on purpose," he says, perfectly calm, as he eats.
"Pff." She wipes at her face with a cheap napkin from the restaurant. "Even if it were, which I'm not saying it is, we've already established that this is completely, totally your own fault."
This time his eyebrow is raised. "Of course."
Regardless, in less than ten minutes, both of the take-out containers have been scraped clean, and they are both leaning back against the trees, close but not quite touching, eyes on the stars and idly swatting at mosquitoes.
"Hey, Neji?" Tenten offers, at last. "I'm glad you decided to eat most of it anyway." He shifts, his eyes closing to the open heavens.
"I didn't want to waste your money." She doesn't have much of it, he knows. They all know. She appreciates this, even though it's only courteous, and keeps her tone teasing.
"Even though you're allergic to tree nuts."
He twitches and flatly denies it.
"'Cause there were a looot of different tree nuts in there, did you taste 'em all? I mean, there were peanuts, and walnuts, and cashews, and this funny looking one..." She trails off, her eyes twinkling.
"Tenten..." he warns.
"Okay, okay." She grins. "But isn't it nice to try something new? Or, at least, off the beaten path?" They both know she isn't just talking about the "low grade" restaurant he'd never otherwise eaten at, let alone even know about, where she'd bought the food, and both their eyes drift to where the two gleaming axes are dug into the ground.
"Mm."
It is not long, though, before he is back up and at it, now attempting to utilize the two axes simultaneously, and normally, Tenten wouldn't have minded letting him have some quality time with her babies, but it is late and she is tired and her aching muscles are not appreciating the excess of swarming mosquitoes this far out in the woods, and she is not sitting another half hour in this humid, sticky mess.
Her hands magnetize to her hips. "Neji Hyuuga, I want my axes back. Now." Because even if he's Neji Hyuuga and her dear teammate, she doesn't trust him with the welfare of two of her most favorite weapons overnight and out of her eagle-eyed sight. It's a silly attachment, she knows, but she doesn't care.
"I'm not giving them back until I've mastered them," he says between experimental off-balancing swings. Her eyelid twitches.
"But I need to polish them and sharpen them and disinfect them and clean them and take care of them before I sleep! And I want them to be right next to me when I'm sleeping..." Her face has taken on some sort of twistedly dreamy expression, and Neji doesn't even need to look to get shivers. When he speaks, though, he is still perfectly calm.
"It isn't as if you have millions of other weapons in your other scrolls."
A muscle tic joins her eyelid in twitching. "So?" she snaps.
"So you won't miss these two," he replies without missing a beat. "I'll return them when I can use both sufficiently."
"Sufficiently?" she says, her eyes starting to crinkle into folds of suspicion. When he doesn't reply, she launches into wildcat rage. "Neji Hyuuga, give me back my property!" she declares indignantly, and a short possession brawl soon occurs.
"Back...off..." Neji growls.
"No way! Mine! It's mine! Gimme!"
Lee, who had just arrived on scene in his characteristic habit of touching base with his two other teammates at the end of each day, freezes in his preparation of making an entrance befitting a Beautiful Green Beast of Konoha. "Uh. Tenten? Neji? What are you two doing...?"
"He won't gimme back my babies!" Tenten wails tearfully, unsurprised at her spandex-clad friend's appearance, pretending she hadn't been about to start ripping Neji's beautiful hair out of his skull.
"Neji, you know you should never argue with a lady. Especially if it's over something that's hers. And especially," Lee whispers loudly, "if it's Tenten's."
Tenten growls, a frightfully guttural sound, when Neji continues gripping her darling axes like no tomorrow. "You heard Lee! Lee's always right! So hand over my babies already!"
Muttering something about bug-eyed freaks, psychotic squirrels, OCD banshees, and disgusting meals, Neji finally lets go of the axe handles. Tenten shrieks in triumph, flying into a crouch next to her axes and lovingly rubbing at the blades with calloused fingers.
"Thank you! Sheesh..."
Lee makes a fabulous exit, flourishing grandly as he disappears into the trees, convinced of the end of a countless one of his teammates' endearing arguments. "Well, good night and sleep tight, Tenten, Neji!"
"Good night, Lee." Tenten calls after him before turning to her dinner buddy, cordial and pleasant now that her two enormous axes are hefted ridiculously on her shoulders. "Bye Neji."
He raises a hand in response, a strangely satisfied look on his face, before splitting paths towards the Hyuuga compound.
...
Later, Tenten would find that the axes Neji had so willingly given up were, in fact, both bunshin of convincing weight and mass. Later. When Neji Hyuuga was conveniently out of her murderous claws' reaches.
He truly is a genius.
(But at least, she had succeeded in making him try something new, and enjoy the taste of it, and that was all that really mattered.)
End.