A/N: Oops! I almost forgot an author's note. So I know I kind of have been ignoring Cowardice for a bit, but this idea hit me and I finally cranked out enough to make a semi-decent first chapter. Maybe...Not really. But anyways, this is my other Naruto OTP, NejiTen! I hope you all enjoy. :)

BIG NOTE: Uhm, this is embarrassing. I didn't realize that I had marked the fic as complete, because it totally isn't. I am so, so sorry if I pulled in people who wanted a complete fic. On the other hand, maybe you will come back for more, eh!? Thanks for reviewing, you guys are way too kind to me!

Disclaimer: I don't own nuffink.

There are two defining factors in my life at this moment.

The first one is that my name is Tenten, I am nineteen years old, and I have never been kissed by a boy.

How atrociously pathetic is that? I turn twenty in less than a month, and I've never had a boyfriend.

That isn't to say I've never liked anybody. On the contrary, I've liked a few people in my day. Oh, my God, I sound like I'm 75! No wonder nobody's ever kissed me, they all must think I'm going senile!

But I'm tired. I'm so, so tired of being overlooked when it comes to romantic prospects. I remember overhearing a conversation that the guys were having a couple years back. I really hate Naruto sometimes…

"Why are we here, Naruto?" was the question they were all asking him at the training grounds. At the time I hadn't thought it was anything major because why would Naruto conduct a secret meeting in the very public training grounds?

Because Naruto is an idiot, that is why. And I only mean that in a minorly insulting way. He's too kind sometimes for his own good, a major pervert and totally in love with Hinata. Plus his loyalty to his friends is pretty inspiring.

Anyways, everyone there was grumbling with a mix of "Hn's", "Troublesomes", and "Is there food involved? Because I'm not so sure I want to stick around otherwise…"

"Guys, I have gathered us together on this day to speak of one of the most important subjects of all: Girls. Specifically, the fine females of our teams. I am currently on the lookout for a fine piece of woman and who better than a fellow teammate?"

The groans of response were long and loud as Sasuke emitted a dismissive, "Dobe" and left.

"Teme, come back here, I'm not done yet!" Naruto hollered. Ah, subtlety is not Naruto's strongest suit. He moaned after Sasuke for a few more moments before he rolled his eyes and got back to the point.

"I want your guy's opinions. I mean, who do we have to choose from here? Sakura, Ino, Hinata (I guess…), and that's basically it!"

What? What? "That's basically it"??? Stupid Naruto, what does he know anyways? As if I'd look at him a second time if he asked me out to begin with!

"What about Tenten, Naruto? She is overflowing with the power of youthfulness and beauty!!" Lee raved, the telltale sparkle entering his eyes.

"What about her, Fuzzy Brows? It's just Tenten, nothing special, right guys?"

Neji "Hn'd" and stalked off, muttering that he was wasting valuable training time and he needed to find me, while silly old Lee stood up for me to everyone else.

"Eh, Lee, you've gotta admit Naruto here may have a point. The only thing special about Tenten is that when you break up with her she's gunna be able to pin your ass to the wall from 100 paces!" Kiba crowed.

So that's all I've got to say about myself? That when some guy breaks my heart I could chop him into tiny pieces from a town away? God, that's just great.

"She's too skinny for my tastes. I need a girl who appreciates food as much as me!" Choji admitted.

I left shortly after that, since the conversation was upsetting on top of completely juvenile. It wasn't even that insulting, really, since it was—is—basically the truth, plus it was completely retarded if you thought about it.

Which I did. A lot more than I should have. The only conclusion my thoughts were leading to was that I didn't, and still don't, want to change. I like being a weapons master. I relish in the feel of cool steel between my fingertips, before I let loose a deadly array of kunai or shuriken.

I only let it get to me at the time because nobody stood up for me. Lee did, sure, but Lee sticks up for everyone. You only hear the words "springtime of youth" so many times until you learn that they don't actually mean anything substantial. Neji just walked away, Kiba went on to make fun of me, Choji says I'm too skinny, and nobody else thought to say, "Hey, Tenten's a pretty nice girl. She isn't too ugly either, if you look at her in dim lighting."

Not that I'm stuck up or anything. I'm just using an example. I'm pretty plain, really. Seriously, brown hair, brown eyes, and I wear the same clothes everyday. There's only so much to notice, and half the time I'm sweaty and covered in either dirt or blood, sometimes even both, so you can't even see me.

Really, that's all I want. Besides a dude to kiss me, that is. For someone to look over at me, Tenten, the weapon's mistress extraordinaire, and see her. Maybe think something like, "Gee, she isn't too shabby at this angle."

Anything. I am so desperate I will take anything not saying I'm ugly or average.

My second defining factor is that I've been informed by Sakura and Ino that I'm in love with Neji.

And I may have figured out that they're right.

-o-

It's probably just a stupid crush, anyways. I mean, it isn't as if there are many available dudes for me to date, let alone see in-between missions, besides Neji, Lee, or Gai-sensei.

And when you put him up against the Green Dream Team, of course Neji is going to win.

So, yes, maybe he is kindasortamaybe a little bit of a pretentious bastard. But he's getting better! And he certainly isn't the same Neji he was when we were chuunins. So maybe he still demands extreme punctuality in everyone he meets. It isn't as if Kakashi's infamous tardiness is admired by anyone, so is it really so bad?

And really, nowadays, that's Neji's biggest flaw. And if he's a little moody, well, no one is as moody as Sasuke, so does it really matter?

What I'm trying to say is that my feelings for Neji are fleeting, even if I've realized he is on my mind most of the time.

But that can't be helped either! It isn't my fault that we've been training together almost everyday for the past 7 years! And when we aren't training together, we're on missions together.

Well, okay, ever since we became jounin there are a few days where he gets called off to do other missions with other people, but he always comes back to Team Gai. Unless he joins ANBU, like he really wants to. Then I guess Lee and I will see him almost never.

That's a sobering thought if there ever was one.

Not that it'll matter, since once he gets into ANBU my feelings will have died down. I am sure they will, really. They HAVE to, there is no other option.

And I think I've done a really good job of hiding it too. Sakura and Ino hadn't even looked at me in that way that says they know that I have feelings in some form or another for Neji until last week! And the closest I feel like I've come to blowing my cover was a brief undercover mission where Neji and I had to act like a newlywed couple.

That is a memory I hope doesn't surface in my mind again anytime soon. Thankfully I was able to pass it off as acting for the mission, and while he looked at me a little oddly for the next few days, I conveniently came down with a fever (it's a simple matter of standing out in the rain for multiple hours while your partner is asleep and doesn't know any better, then drying your clothes and waking up with the chills) that might've made him believe that I also hadn't been feeling well the day before when I had been "acting so strangely".

Oh well, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do!

And maybe that mission had been almost 6 months ago, and maybe I might've recently realized that I may or may not have possibly liked Neji before that mission, and maybe before that mission meant that it might've been somewhere around a year or so before that I started getting butterflies in my stomach when he pinned me down during training, or walked into a room, or looked at me like he really sees me…

I maybe have it kind of bad. But this can't last much longer, it can't! I won't allow it, and now is a really bad time for me to be in love with Neji anyways, because I think Neji is seeing someone.

He hasn't said anything to me specifically, or even implied that he is seeing another girl at all. It's just that he's been canceling training a lot lately, and he never cancels, even when he is extremely ill and/or injured. And when that happens, I usually have to knock him out as fast as possible and drag him back to his house/the hospital.

But he's already canceled practice once every week for the past two months (not that I am keeping track…) and he just stopped by to inform me that he needs to cancel again tomorrow when he already canceled yesterday!!

The only reason he might do that, in my humble opinion (which is pretty accurate, if I do say so myself. Sometimes I think I know Neji better than Neji knows Neji), is because he is in love.

With another girl.

Who isn't me.

I hate talking to Sakura and Ino. They always pull things out of me, emotions-wise, that I find better to repress, such as my feelings for Neji. I mean, maybe I've known that I've had a bit of a crush on him, but I never thought it was as extreme as loving him!

Sakura and Ino said that once I start saying things like, "He looks at me like he really sees me, sometimes" or "When I bypass his Kaiten in training and we start fighting in close combat and he manages to pin me down on the ground with his body, I start getting a tingly feeling everywhere he is touching me and a little more breathless than I normally would be" that means I have to love him, and it definitely isn't a crush. Especially, they said, if I've "had a crush of some sort" on him for a year and a half.

I don't personally believe that having a crush on someone for over a year means that I love them. I think it just means that I never get out because I spend all of my free time with Neji training. The past two months have been an exception though, and in the beginning I still used the time to train by myself.

It's only been the past few times that Neji canceled on me that I decided to take a break and read a book or go out and walk around town. More recently I've taken to going out with Sakura and Ino, if they're free. It's not as if I've got anything better to do, unlike Neji.

That's how they came to realize I'm in love with Neji. Our get-togethers, that is. Because they said I spend a freakish amount of time talking about Neji for someone who claims to have no special feelings towards him. After a few weeks of that I finally gave in and told them that I may or may not have "special" feelings for Neji, but only a crush. And then it was only yesterday that they told me I'm in love with him.

Which is so, so wrong. That I love him, I mean. He's my teammate, my friend! We've known each other almost our entire lives, no matter how distantly. He's never thought of me in that way, so why should I be allowed to think of him in that way?

It's sick, that's what it is. Sakura says that it is just natural, because as a team we need to function in such close quarters, and as teammates we see each other at our best and worst moments. But I think it's bogus, and that I have some kind of genetic disorder. Or a case of anti-socialness that has produced this psychosis that I am suffering from.

That is the only obvious explanation as to why I suddenly look forward to being wounded in places I can't bandage on my own, so that Neji can clean and wrap them for me. I'm worried that it's clouding my judgment on missions, and jeopardizing the safety of both myself and my teammates.

And that's also why I was planning on using tomorrow training session with Neji as a chance to tell him I'm leaving Team Gai and stopping our training together.

If he wants to be with someone else, that is good for him. I want him to be happy, but it will be at my expense. I don't want to slip up one day and hurt him, or Lee, or even Gai-sensei just because I have "special feelings" for him that I have no plans whatsoever of telling him about.

Besides, this is going to happen eventually. Neji wants ANBU, and Neji gets what he wants. And whatever Neji wants, Lee will undoubtedly want to beat him in it. So if Neji goes ANBU, Lee is sure to follow.

I don't want ANBU. I know I've spent a good portion of my life on missions and Team Gai, but the secrecy and the constant work is too much for me. I like to fool myself into thinking I have the option of going out and not training with Neji, and I wouldn't be able to do that in ANBU.

I'm going to refer to it as a pre-emptive strike. My leaving, that is. Lee and Neji will have to get better at working together anyways, as they will inevitably end up partnered together a lot. So my leaving is, in fact, beneficial to them in the long run. They will realize, perhaps sometime soon, that my leaving is a good thing. And then maybe once they realize that, they'll forgive me.

Well, scratch that. Lee will forgive me immediately, if I can make him believe I actually want this. Neji, on the other hand, is going to see my leaving for what it is—quitting. Neji despises quitters. He feels that there is no such thing as an impossible task, and that while overcoming some obstacles may take more time and work than others, they can eventually be surpassed. He is going to ridicule me, and try to bait me into backing down and staying on the team.

But I will stand firm in my decision, because on top of deciding to leave Team Gai, I have decided to throw myself into the "dating scene" as Sakura called it. I am 19 years old, I have never been kissed, and I am tired of waiting around for Neji, especially now that he has someone else in his life.

Tomorrow will be my introduction into the dating scene. Sakura and Ino are spending today planning my hair, makeup, and wardrobe. I trust them to make good choices so that I don't look like I'm desperate, which I really am. They were surprised that I was moving my break out to tomorrow, since I'd told them it would have to be next week, or the next time Neji canclled on me.

They were more bummed about him canceling than I was, I think. At least, they acted more bummed out than I did. I was pretty crushed about it. I still kinda am.

Whatever! I don't need him for anything, especially for training! Let him have a girlfriend. I hope they get married and have a million freaky eyed kids and that he realizes he should've been with me and that he's miserable and—

No, that is not how I want it to go. I want him to be happy, but at the same time I feel like he would be happiest with me. I thought we were happy, as friends at least, up until that first cancellation. Obviously I was wrong, but it's not as if that soothes my wounds in any way.

This is why I repress things. It is so much easier to sweep my problems under the rug and pretend as if nothing is changed, when in reality a major thing has changed that has the possibility of changing the entire dynamic of our friendship.

My main problem now, outside of entering the dating scene, is telling Neji about Team Gai. I was going to tell him after training tomorrow, or maybe even before so that he'd be able to enjoy it more. That plan is obviously not going to work anymore, so I'm going to have to hunt him down at the Hyuuga estates.

Just what I was hoping to be able to do tomorrow, that is for sure.

I hope Neji doesn't kill me for quitting.