Something Undone
TenTen's knee is scrapped and she is eight and unhappy; so he passes a ladybug onto her finger. She giggles and lifts it up to eye level. She calls his trick of calling ladybugs "neat". She does not like it as much when he shows her cockroaches.
He frowns and explains that cockroaches are much more practical bugs than the ones that she prefers. She grins and tells him he's very serious for a seven year old and kisses him on the cheek. Even though she thinks bugs are gross; he isn't.
Shino blushes.
He doesn't know that years later she'll be ANBU and he'll be a Jounin with a Genin team. Or that neither will be married, but TenTen's landlord will recognize him and always ask about the progress of said team.
She doesn't know that after today they do not talk again until he is fourteen and she fifteen. She doesn't know that this day will be forgotten soon and lost in the whirl of childhood colors and textures and feelings.
At sixteen she will date and it won't be him. Previous to that she meets him (again) through connections and decides that he will make a good friend. He thinks that she is slightly foolish, but talks to her none-the-less. At fifteen he watches as she begins to get distracted and flustered. He understands or, at least, thinks he does. She, however, is just confused.
When she loses her virginity it is not what was promised and she breaks into his house while he's out on a mission and sleeps in his bed and bathes in his tub.
Shino does not understand why she seems to have moved in while he was gone. She offers no explanation. He has learned to watch her closely though and that night TenTen's (ex-)boyfriend wakes up covered in cockroaches and screams. 'Cockroaches are useful bugs,' he explains when she hears the news. She is sixteen and happy again.
Her stay is not long after that and Shino helps her find an apartment along with her old teammate; Rock Lee. He does not say anything when Lee hugs her around the waist upon greeting her. He frowns. They find her an apartment and months insist on fleeing.
TenTen makes the mistake of letting down her hair in his presence one evening. She is visiting and tired and she feels like the buns are pulling on her scalp. Fingers hurriedly soothe the itch and yank out the bindings. She shakes her head to loosen the hair from its stiff position and looks at him questioningly; he's stopped mid-sentence. It's because he has seen her (suddenly something new) and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Shino swallows. He adjusts his glasses anxiously. He cannot help but feel as though she has taken this farther than he gave permission for - he is not ready to do the same.
At some later date; he does the same. Ready or not. Because everything is reduced to children's games at this point.