title: misericordia
summary: honor thy mother. — NejiHina, and the plights of pregnancy.
raw word count: 1875
notes: this is shameless, self-indulgent fanservice.
.
.
.
it's a sweltering evening in late July; the sky is cotton-candy, melancholy pink burning up into bitter tangerine, blinding gold at the lip where the earth dips to kiss the falling sun.
he reaches out to touch her, mum underneath the overwhelming feeling of awe.
Neji has always loved Hinata in much the same way believers love their gods — quiet and desperate, all-consuming. she still doesn't feel real; he doubts she ever will, even when she's right beneath his fingertips.
"It hurts," she whispers, and the light catches on the edge of her contour, a burning nimbus. "They're so swollen it hurts."
the breath hitches in his throat. he swallows thickly, undignified. "Can I make it better?"
"You may try," she says, and the curl of her smile seems suddenly dangerous.
somewhere behind them, the cicadas pick up their song.
she rises from where she's seated at the edge of the porch, a little off-balance; her center of gravity is skewed by the advanced pregnancy. when she wobbles, he steadies her, an ever-dutiful shadow with gentle hands. she leans into his side, impossibly warm to the point of seeming febrile.
"Thank you, brother."
"That's husband, now," he corrects, leading her inside.
her hand knots in the fabric of his yukata, right above the tailbone. "Can't you be both?"
"Can I?"
she laughs, a mirthful tinkle of silver-wrought bells. "You certainly may try," she echoes, pressing a kiss to his shoulder.
he helps her onto a chaise, mindful of her belly. traditional wear is a little awkward, and so she's donning a simple white sundress, stopping just short of her knees. he rather likes the fall of it — it makes for such a beatific image. she notices the way his stare lingers a little too long on her bosom with a bemused smile.
"Touch them."
"Pardon?"
small hands curl around his wrists, and she brings his open palms to her chest. "I told you, did I not? It hurts. So if you could, just, um." her cheeks flush, sun-kissed and champagne-rose. "...give me a hand? Or, well. Two."
they both have a hard time not laughing.
"Are you sure?" he says once he sobers, searching her face.
"Oh, I am very sure," she says. then, in a much smaller voice: "Hormones are such a messy affair."
he obliges. careful hands slip off the straps of her dress, pulling down the fabric of the top until it's neatly bunched on the curve of her stomach.
"Somehow this is so wrong," he finds himself murmuring, but his palms cup her breasts all the same. she sighs, a short, relieved hiss of air.
"Ahh...that feels so nice."
she takes his hands in hers again, guiding him; and following her lead he kneads the flesh, gentle yet firm, enraptured with the way the weight and shape of tissue shifts beneath the thin, translucent skin. he brushes a knuckle over the budding of a nipple and she shivers, arching into him.
"Have I ever told you," she breathes, half-lidded eyes fluttering closed, "how much I love how cold your hands are?"
"Quite often, actually."
her hands fall, deliberate; tracing his forearms in slow back-and-forth, snaking their way up his biceps to finally settle at the sides of his throat. she rubs circles into the firm muscle shielding the nape, a wistful look overtaking her features.
"I love you, you know."
"I know. I love you too, Hinata."
the proof of it beats between them — the child growing from her bones, tucked away safe in the darkness of her womb. their child. he kisses the inside of her elbow, endlessly tender.
yet her eyes are burning now with a different kind of fire.
"Say, Neji."
"Hm?"
she bites her lip, contemplative.
"Do you think you could...?"
he stares, and stares, and stares. and then understanding dawns on him, and he doesn't know whether to be mortified or laugh. with a gasp, he at last settles on mock appallment:
"My, lady Hinata. I never would've guessed you'd be so kinky."
she squirms. "It's n-not my fault, okay."
he pulls at her breasts with a thoughtful hum, tortuously slow; savoring each and every second of her sweet, sweet, sweet needful agony, down to the most minute of shadows that pass across her face.
"Would it be safe, though? For the baby, I mean."
"Sakura-chan said it should be fine, as long as we're not too rough about it."
"You asked her?"
she flushes. "M-maybe."
he laughs; and it's such a rare occurrence, she feels like the clouds have parted at the eye of a storm.
"Oh, dove. I feel—I don't know how to feel, really." he dips to kiss her, too deeply to be wholly chaste. "I love you. I love you so much, you've no idea."
"I think I have a rather good idea, actually," she says, and gives his groin a gentle nudge with her knee.
And here I thought I was being subtle about it.
"My apologies."
"What for?" she asks, laughing a little. "If anything, it's a relief you still find me attractive."
"That will never change," he says, and it's a promise made with steel-solid conviction.
she caresses his face, the juts of its' bones an old, familiar roadway. he is a beautiful man — undeniably and almost unfairly so, to the point where there were times in their lost youth when she'd find herself envying just how fine his features really are. it is a visage sculpted by a godly hand, she'd always thought; nothing fully of the earth has any business being quite so divine.
caught up in the emotion, she peppers a jagged line of kisses from the crown of his head to the sharpest point of his jaw: forehead first, then the tip of his nose; one on each eyelid, all of it sealed up with a lingering, heartfelt press to the lips.
he gathers her up in his arms, hands locked secure underneath her thighs. she squeals, half in surprise, half in delight, arms quick to wind around his neck for support.
"Warn me next time, will you?"
he is content to simply nod into the side of her throat, breathing in her scent: lily-of-the-valley and summerset breeze, all wrapped up around something that is distinctly hers and hers alone. he carries her to their bed in a daze, dreaming wide awake of faraway meadows and her bare body underneath the serene sway of grass, sunlight caught around the curve of an exposed breast in curious imitation of an open, hungry mouth.
once she is lain safely down on the mattress, he curls his teeth around the very same spot. she moans, and the sound of it melts into the air, setting across his shoulders as a saccharine mist.
her arms arch around him, halfway between a plea and a fervent gesture of possession.
"Be gentle," she says, hushed.
he is; mouth and hands soft phantoms, stripping her spare through a flurry of kisses. she tugs at his obi in turn, undoing it with a flick of the wrist — exploring the body that was hidden underneath, curious hands contrasting its' texture to that of the offending garment. his skin is far softer than silk, she decides; and he decides he rather likes her like this, openly wanton, honest in her desires.
sex with her is always a near-religious experience. he sucks at the junction of her throat, and feels sand beneath his closed eyelids; This, too, is a kind of absolution, he thinks, and she traces his shoulderblades, almost as if she'd heard him.
he moves downward, nuzzling at her collarbone; then lower still, mouth again cupping her breast.
"I think I know why your chest hurts," he says, teeth rolling over the pearl of her nipple, contemplative. "You're lactating."
"Ah." a pause. then, almost embarrassed: "Sakura-chan said that it might happen, but I thought, what are the chances?"
he hums, and the sound reverberates between them in tiny crackles of thunder. "Not that I'm complaining, mind."
"Gosh, you are s-such a pervert!"
she hides her face in her hands, throat and face and the tips of the ears all flushing the loveliest shade of peach he's ever seen. he cannot help himself — he bites down and pulls, catching her squeal with the side of his thumb.
"I think we both are, hm?"
to that, she has no retort.
he explores her body, the pace of his crawl unhurried — mapping it out with his mouth, memorizing anew each and every inch of her skin. the companionable silence that lowers over them is punctuated only by the soft sighs answering the turn of his lips. he touches the dip of her spine, palm open and flat on her tailbone, and when she arches in response he feels something frail blossom within the confines of his chest, painting his innards pale, effervescent red.
the geometry of her is so infinitely lovely, it could bring men and gods alike to their knees.
when his tongue curls at last on the slit of her sex, it is a searing homecoming; a baptism of salt, and were he to drown right then and there, he'd die such happy death.
"T-tease," she murmurs, breathless, and so he tugs at her clit until her eyes begin to water.
her initial orgasm is sudden and forceful: with a wordless gasp she spasms, toes digging down into the sheets for traction, nerveless hands fisted in his hair — he rides it with her, arms coiled around her thighs splaying her open, teeth and tongue relentless in their affection, and then she's coming again, and again, and again. he savors them all, drinking her empty.
"That," she notes once the quakes of it all finally subdue, "is f-foul play, Neji."
he stamps a kiss to her labia, shameless.
"Is it?"
she pulls him to her, seamlessly reversing their positions, and the press of her soft thighs so close to his aching member is almost too much to bear.
"It is," she echoes, lowering herself down his length with a hiss.
and in that moment the world around him melts away, until all that is left is the gentle sway of her hips, an ebbing tide eroding and shaping the shores of his consciousness — he feels her deep in the marrow, an electric undercurrent netting the lining of his skin that makes his bones and teeth ache, raw with a want that lacks a proper lexicon.
he clings to her, whole body an open wound, mouth glued to her breasts in something akin to a desperate prayer.
each touch passed between them is an essay on the nature of a soul: once stripped of rationality and the pretense of understanding, all that is left of man is naked emotion, a bleeding heartbeat. her nails scrape down the jagged ridge of his spine, loving red, and he comes undone with a sigh, the sweet taste of her milk and blood filling his mouth, washing him clean of all semblance of linear thought.
"I was too rough," he laments, much later when they've sobered. she simply smiles in response, tracing his jawline with her thumb.
"Not at all. A little crude, perhaps; but I like that on you."
.
.
.
fin.