Title: Spiders
Fandom: Naruto
Character(s)/Shipping: ShinoHinata
Rating: G
Genre: Oneshot fluff
Theme: #1 - Introduction For fichan
Notes: ShinoHina isnt my cup of tea...but I tried. Not my best.
"I won't let it hurt you."
Words exchanged over a spider, cupped gently in the boy's hand as the white-eyed girl he sat with stared in wonder. Two children, no older than five, sat close together on the grass, though they were far enough away from each other to be proper. One could see from the clean, formal attire of the two that they were of noble blood, and it was this noble blood that kept them from getting too close as normal children would.
This had been the first time the two had met.
Hyuuga Hinata had not left the house with her father until that morning and could not have known the meeting that she was accompanying him to would involve another child her age. She had been shy at first, as she had never before met another child that was not directly related to her, much less a boy of that type. She had tried to hide behind her father's leg, as if she could disappear just by doing that simple act of child-like fear and reluctance. Now she found herself mere feet away from the two fathers with no leg to grab on to, staring down at the eight-legged creature she feared. Why, no, how was the boy holding it, unafraid? How did he not fear its possible poison and its many eyes all staring up at him? Could it be that he couldn't see from behind those dark glasses? What if the boy and his father wore them because they had no eyes…? No, that was silly, she thought seriously, dismissing the idea. She had seen the boy do things like help her up and avoid stepping on the aforementioned arachnid; these things required eyesight.
Yet, she was afraid.
She had been afraid since the second she met Aburame Shino and for all her five years prior.
She could remember it even now, as she trained with her teammates in the warm glow of the summer sun. It was only around them that she felt safe enough to remove her coat. Only around them she felt she could fight with the boys.
She no longer feared like she had back then.
There was very little she was scared of in this world anymore; being shy and being scared did not connect in her mind. Bowing in apology as she knocked Shino's glasses off with a miscalculated palm thrust, she thought about how those irisless eyes had once made her quiver with a fear she could remember so well. Reaching down to pick up the fallen glasses, Hinata yanked her hand away at the realization that she was not alone in her plight for the dark lenses.
Walking over them was a black spider, all too similar to the one that had frightened her all those years ago. Grabbing his glasses and taking the spider in his hand gently, Shino smiled at his female companion as he took her hand in his. Cupping the sparingly callused limb in his own, he let the spider make his way onto the smaller of the two hands.
"I won't let it hurt you."
It was then, with a blush and an exchange of silent understanding, that Hinata understood her thoughts to be true.
There was nothing to fear anymore.