A/N: Hello world! This is my first upload ever, so I do ask that you be a tad bit kind on my poor little soul. However, I do wholeheartedly welcome constructive criticism. I know it's short, but I figured it would be nice to upload a little one-shot as I start to write other stories. It is Neji and Hinata, so if you don't like that pairing I strongly suggest you stop reading now. If you don't mind them as a FanFiction couple I hope you enjoy. Thanks. :o)
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Bent
He looks out the window, seated upon his knees as he awaits his cup of green tea. With thin, graceful hands she fingers the kettle's handle gently so, slowly pouring its steaming contents into two black porcelain cups. The first is given to him, and she motions for him to drink. Together they sip in a comfortable silence. From above the rim of her cup she watches him stare out into the Hyūga courtyard. There is not much to look at; only a single tree and a field of dirt compacted from years of treading.
"Neji." She whispers. He turns to her, eyes questioning.
"Yes, Hinata?"
She sets her drink aside and looks him straight in the eye. She grasps his hand and smiles. The single dimple on her left cheek surfaces.
"It's a girl."
They did not believe they could ever learn to love one another. For nearly a year they did not hold hands, did not speak of each other as husband and wife, did not sleep together in their marriage bed.
They would go weeks without seeing one another, without noticing the other's absence; he was always busy with his commitments to ANBU, she had just been assigned her first team of three genin.
They did not build their lives around each other.
Until slowly, ever so slowly, they bent for one another. It began with quiet understanding, the gentle touch of a warm hand, the bond that grew amongst a time of war and death.
It began with the homemade o-bentou lunches she sent him off with before cleaning up and leaving the compound to meet her students. The gleaming kunai and shuriken he sharpened every night for her weapon pouches. The calloused thumb that wiped away a falling tear as she swept her father's grave on the anniversary of his death. The thin arms that engulfed him when he arrived home late one night from a mission gone awry, exhausted and broken and covered in his comrade's blood.
It was not love. At least not at first.