Hinata slumped in the backseat, her head resting on Tayuya's shoulder. Her face was sweaty, and however much that disgusted Tayuya, she wasn't about to wipe at her face with any part of her body.
"I told you not to let her drink," Neji scolded her from the front seat, where his white knuckles were clenched around the wheel. The highway in front of the car was dark, and the headlights flooded only a very small portion of the road with light. Tayuya glanced into the darkness beyond what they could make out, and she wasn't sure what sorts of figures she spotted.
"And I told you to go fuck yourself," she shot back, not the least bit preoccupied with Hinata's current state.
He didn't reply. Arguing with Tayuya was a fruitless task.
He dropped them off at Hinata's apartment and announced that he had to go. "Tomorrow night," was his farewell as the slick black car slid away on its rubber wheels. Tayuya tugged the dark-haired woman up the steps, and struggled with the front door.
"Where're we? What the hell is going on?" Hinata muttered in her half-sleep as Tayuya tossed her onto her own bed.
"Your apartment," she shot back, turning to go into the kitchen. She needed a good stiff drink; Hinata had taken all of hers at the party.
When she came back, Hinata was asleep, drooling all over the emerald covers that Neji had gotten her from his visit to India. The colors were lovely, and it fabric was wonderful against your skin, but it was dirt cheap. Hinata had always done away with it before Tayuya had convinced her that either way the underpaid workers had already made the damn thing and she might as well enjoy it.
She fell asleep on the couch until six in the morning, where her cell phone chirped it early-morning song. She left Hinata hurried note: Recording, still. Tonight. Love, Red.
Day was a long one, but Hinata never asked about it. That was the way all of them liked it. None of them liked to vent, and they'd hold their rage and their pain and their breaths for as long as possible. Sometimes they'd never exhale. Hinata was still in bed when Tayuya stomped her way into the apartment, slinging her boots down somewhere in the vicinity of the front door, her bare feet capable of making quite enough noise.
She hadn't changed, either, the redhead noted with some distaste, and she ordered the other woman to get underdressed, more out of a reluctance to go near the no doubt rank clothing than sexual desire. Hinata blinked wordlessly, and quickly slithered out of the brown dress without getting out from under the covers. She threw it onto the chair in the corner of the room, and abandoned dress lay there uselessly, ignored.
Tayuya threw her own jacket over the dress, black over brown. Then she joined Hinata on the bed, and her hands drew the small woman close. Her lips caressed the crook of her throat, feeling the gentle pulse go faster, faster. Hinata's fingers swept over her hips, moving past the edge of her shirt and over the warm expanse of her stomach.
Warm and mostly pleased, Tayuya sat up afterwards, propped up against the headboard of the bed. Her fingers scrambled for the cigarette on her pants pocket and for the lighter on the bedside table.
"Remember the day I met you?" Hinata asked, her eyes solemn and the covers pulled up to her chin.
Tayuya lit up, the red end of her cigarette the only glow in the room. She grunted a yes that might as well have been a no.
"You were recording your first record. You came into the bagel shop and…I remember exactly what I said to you. I remember because I messed up. I went, Hi, I can help you. It's not a big deal, really, but…
"Anyway, you looked at me for such a long time I thought that…I don't know. I guess I thought I'd cursed in your language, or something—"
"I don't look any more German that the million other German-American in this country, Hinata."
"—And then you told me you loved my eyes. And that I was going on your CD cover."
Tayuya took a long drag. "Well, you were. Are on it still. What's your point?"
Hinata smiled, knowing that Tayuya wouldn't be able to make it out. The curtains were closed. "No one had ever told me my eyes were beautiful before. And, well…just the way you just told me rather than asked me."
Laughter reverberated through the room. "You should have realized then what you were getting into, no?"
A long silence followed, and outside the cars and the streetlights battled for dominance. Sirens in the distance, and no way of telling when Neji's car would pull up into the visitor's parking lot.
"I still think your eyes are fuckin' amazing," Tayuya told her suddenly, casually, blowing out smoke.
"Thank you."
Tayuya's legs swiveled off the edge of the bed, and her thin fingers pulled back the curtains, allowing the streetlight moonlight to spill into the room. Hinata felt naked for the first time that night. "Where's your fuckin' cousin?"
"…He probably went out for a drink with the producers. You know…"
"I do know." She turned to face Hinata, her eyes hidden by the shadows. "Why are we always waiting for someone we know isn't coming?"
Hinata was stunned. It wasn't that Neji lied, things just that it slipped his mind sometimes. He had a busy schedule and meetings to make. He was in the middle of filming a movie. Excuses could be made for him.
"I'm doin' my own shit, too," Tayuya continued, knowing the line of thought that Hinata was walking on. "An' here I am. Waiting."
"…Well, this is what we've gotten ourselves into. No?"
This mockery of her own statement enraged her, suddenly, and she threw the cigarette down, crushing it with her heel. It burned the bare skin of her foot, and she hissed at the sudden sting. "Fuck this shit." She limped towards the door, swinging her jacket and pants over her shoulder. She'd put both of them on in the bathroom after washing her foot.
Before she reached the doorway, through, she turned to face Hinata. A thin strand of light from the window shown on her face, and displayed it partially. Her eyes were hidden, but her lips, her poisonous, angry words…
"Know what I read in the fuckin' tabloids? Neji's screwing his co-star. And the music director." She spun around again, heading down to the bathroom, talking as she limped. "And the screenwriter. And the producer. And the fucking costume director. Who's got a cock!" She slammed the bathroom door behind her. Second later the sound of water running came from that direction rather than Tayuya's embittered words.
Twenty minutes later, Tayuya was gone.
Fifty minutes later, Neji swaggered into the room, his eyes blasé as his gaze fell on Hinata, who was still clutching the bed sheets between her fists like a frightened child. His glanced around, his expression now on of curiosity.
"Red left," Hinata told him, answering his unspoken question.
Neji slipped his shirt over his head and placed it on top of Hinata's discarded brown dress on his way to the bed. He could feel Tayuya's warmth still on the mattress, albeit barely. "I hear the recording company's real close to dropping her…"
"They can't," Hinata gasped, "she has a three year deal with them!"
"Which expires by the end of this summer. I hear the plan is to have her go on tour. They haven't gotten real far on the new album anyway, and she can play a few of her new songs at the concerts to attract more people." Neji spoke in a drawl, as if Tayuya's life in general bored him. Hinata didn't know what to make of it. He was an actor after all, but didn't actors know when to hang their hats? Or maybe that was just Neji, who without some kind of character didn't know who to be…
"…How do you know?"
Neji leaned over and kissed the closest side of her neck, nibbling on the skin, dark from the shadows. "Went for a drink with the Heroine. Her father's the CEO of Red's recording company, remember?"
Hinata pursed her lips and furrowed her brow, ignoring his advances. "But why?"
His hands roamed down her shoulders, and as one moved on down to her hips, the other paused at a breast, rubbing against it gently. His lips moved up her jaw line, but she wriggled away from him. She sat up and her gaze was taking no shit. "Why?"
Neji sighed dramatically and leaned back against the bed, locking his fingers behind the back of his head. "Have you heard the crap she's calling music lately?"
"…I like it."
"You would. It sounds suspiciously that that anti-folk trash you blast in here when you're painting. The public isn't going to go for it."
"That's what you said about her first two albums—"
"There's a fine like between something new and something unpopular. The recording company, not I, have decided she's crossed that line. Usually artists will compromise, for the sake of the record deal. But the fact that Red is being mulish comes as no surprise to me."
"She was…in a bad mood today. I should have…"
Neji yawned, as if this topic bored him to tears. "No, you shouldn't have. She wouldn't have told you. She thinks you're going to break into tears at any moment. And the way that she has sex with you, I'm not surprised…"
She felt her cheeks enflaming at the implication, but she didn't respond. Maybe Tayuya was a little bit…harsh when she…well, going at it…but Neji seemed to enjoy that side of her as much as Hinata. In fact, that seemed to be the only side of Tayuya he approved of.
"If she…if she goes on tour. This is the first time you're both in the city at the same time all year." Hinata studied him closely as she said that, hoping for some sort of a reaction. He simply blinked, as if it hadn't really occurred to him, and then he shrugged.
"I'll be back to inhale the harmful toxins by the summer."
"But—"
Suddenly he turned, and slowly got off the bed, the springs squeaking their farewells. She opened her mouth to ask him where he was going, but she knew the answer. Neji hated when she asked him for answers she was fully aware of.
"If we're not going to have sex, I am going home."
"The hotel?"
"Yes, the hotel," he snapped, tugging his shirt over his head again, gently mussing his hair. "I don't want to talk about Tayuya." He wanted to talk about himself, she knew. He'd been waiting for the question of how his day has been, and even if he'd only respond with a sentence or two, it was more than he gave most people.
It wasn't just the sex, Hinata knew, but it still hurt that he said it.
"You brought it up."
"Thought you should know. Thought that you could go without rambling on about your girlfriend for a little while, but I guess I assumed too much…"
Hinata didn't reply; Neji didn't want her to, after all.
Three minutes later, he was gone.
It was very, very quiet in the apartment without either of them. They were the ones that filled the apartment with noise and all that hustle bustle of life. She brought the covers back up to her chin, and she closed her eyes slowly, willing the silence away.
She didn't know where it came from, this desire to be closest to those that could hurt her the most. Once, she'd fallen in love with someone who was good for her. Once, his blond hair hand been in between her fingers, and he'd held her close.
But there had only been so long that she could put up with such kind treatment.
He might have actually loved her. Maybe. But she told him that she was moving to the city. He told her that he wouldn't be going with her.
She'd known that.
She wrote him letters sometimes, brief bursts of emotion that she rarely displayed, despite Neji and Tayuya's common belief that Hinata was a fountain of sensitivity. She'd tell him about Neji's new film, Tayuya's recent concerts, her own paintings.
He wrote back, telling her that it hurt to read her letters, but he was happy for her. And he was trying to be happy for himself, too. And sometimes he spoke about his own life, his slow ascensions. She missed him, sometimes she strongly that her chest ached. But she couldn't surround herself with his selflessness. Always, she would kiss him and think of rougher lips. Bites and gnawing and cold fingers against the small of her back.
Naruto was too good for her.
And really, she didn't love him for himself so much as she loved the attention he lavished on her. It wasn't fair to him.
Then again, the situation she'd gotten herself into wasn't exactly fair to anyone either.
Her apartment, which she'd decorated painstakingly so that both Neji and Tayuya could find this home, well…they were here when they visited her, but they never got comfortable. They always rented out a hotel room, and they always called it home.
She sat up and pulled her easel out of the closet, setting it up with the ease of someone who's done it a million times. She always brought out an unfinished canvas, and placed it lovely upon the easel.
It was a cup of a wine balanced on a cage. The image was caught at that very moment before you know that the wineglass is going to fall. The cage, too, is tipping precariously, but at least it won't stain the tablecloth.
There's something missing.
It hits her, suddenly.
An hour later, on the far left side of the painting, there's a clear shadow of a person standing just outside the painting's view. All you can see is their hand, and it is holding a rag, prepared to dab at the white tablecloth. It's pointless, but she has to try. Maybe it'll only be a light pink, in the end. She's not trying to catch the wineglass or the cage. That's not what she's there for.
Someone has to clean up the mess. Someone has to be there when everything has broken.
Hinata goes to bed, and hopes that when she awakens, they'll be back.
They each have a key.