Bargains
She understands, through years of observing and learning,
that when one gets involved with one of the boys from Team 7,
the other one is likely to follow.
They're a package deal and Hinata is all for bargains.
She understands, through years of observing and learning, that when one gets involved with one of the boys from Team 7, the other one is likely to follow.
They're a package deal and Hinata is all for bargains.
Sasuke stays where he leans against the oak tree where she practises her knife throwing, eyes obsidian dark and Hinata can read eight years worth of pain in that abyss, can see how it's a knife wound that's not healed, but rusted over instead.
They politely ignore each other for some time, Hinata continuing with her target practise and Sasuke with his own devices deep in his mind.
A knife is blown off target and Hinata ignores the momentary flash of Sasuke's eyes. The knife cleaves itself a few inches from the round board, landing a foot away from where the boy leant against the tree. He grunts, and flicks some lint from his shoulder, unfazed. Hinata is sure that if Naruto had been where Sasuke had stood she would have gotten some sort of reaction out of him, possibly a more violent one.
"Your aim is off," he says, as if Hinata were his teammate.
Hinata ignores the fact that he did it on purpose.
"It seems so." she says. She remembers that if Sasuke is nearby, Naruto wouldn't be too far off, and neither would Sasuke's usual gaggle of giggling girls. "Could you help, then?"
Sasuke's mask of indifference is replaced by a quick flash of surprise, before he grunts and walks over to her, pulling out her knife with an almighty wrench. She doesn't sneak in a jaunt about his superior skill in all fields, because she's seen what pressure and expectations do to people;
destroy them.
Sasuke had seen how she'd changed that day in the prelims, how she wasn't that tiny helpless girl.
He also knows that she's one of the rare girls whose eyes don't grow wide at the sight of him, or the beating of their hearts' increase. (Sakura, of course, is a bit of a different case, since she's been in the same team as him for a while and has had to clean up his blood. But it's still a sort of standing rule that Sakura is still very much interested in Sasuke's love life.)
She's safe, to him, and that realisation strikes something in her.
"I guess that I should say thanks for setting that dumbass' head right. You did him good." he says, clinking away as he unsheathes his own knife set, the steady swing and thunk beating a rhythm in their quiet company.
She smiles.
"I guess that we're even, then."
(That he deliberately sabotaged her knives so that he could repay her by helping with her aim, is something that is sneaky and slightly funny to Hinata. It's also something that warms her inside just a little.)
Sasuke grunts, his arm briefly brushing against the stiff cotton of her jumper as he throws a bullseye into her score board.
The second one he throws is intercepted by a shuriken, which clangs loudly against the metals and flings both projectiles off course. A second shuriken is thrown and imbeds itself right next to the knife Sasuke threw seconds before, wedged tightly in the bullseye.
Behind them, Naruto lands from where he had jumped out of a tree and smirks at both of them as they turn to look at him. Neither of them are exactly surprised at it.
Naruto bows his head in Hinata's direction, acknowledging her presence, before walking over to his teammate and whispering something in his ear, covered by his hand. It surprises Hinata mildly that Naruto knew she could lip-read, or maybe it was just coincidence.
He walks so that he is standing on Hinata's other side, closer than friends would do, then draws his artillery of throwing weapons and cocks his arm, a glint in his eyes and a twist in his grin when he looks at her and says;
"How many bullseyes do you think you can hit before Sasuke's fan club arrives?"
They hit a total of forty-seven bullseyes; fifteen by Sasuke, thirteen by Hinata and nineteen by Naruto –who couldn't help but show off to the both of them- when Sasuke's posse of jittery and squealing admirers arrives to coo at Sasuke's throwing technique and stare at his ass.
Sasuke swears something foul under his breath and is none too kind when he grabs Hinata by the arm and his teammate by the collar, Naruto laughing hysterically all the while as they leave the girls to groan with disappointment as they jump up into the trees.
Sometime after Hinata's match with Neji? :0 If anyone wants me to make another Cutthroat AU please tell! :)
I love the sort of featherlight flirting that they use, the sabotage, the playing along, the showing off.