Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
"What?" Neji spluttered, staring at his slightly insane-looking girlfriend.
"You heard me, you idiot," Tenten growled. "I'm pregnant!"
Neji winced. In retrospect, the fact that her "hello" to him that afternoon had been a flying vase (the flowers still in; they were scattered on the sunlit floor like little white bodies) should have been a big clue.
Neji had no idea how to handle this. She was pregnant? As in, going to have a child in nine months pregnant? Okay, calm yourself. You can handle this, you can handle this…
He pretended to be calm, but in reality, thanks to the prospect of fatherhood looming over his head and Tenten looking absolutely incensed, Hyuuga Neji was terrified. Oh, God, she's gonna kill me…
"Alright…" Neji ventured cautiously, wondering if he should reach for a kunai.
"No it is not alright! Do you have any idea what sort of consequences this is going to have for the future?! Do you?!"
"I…I…" he stuttered, backing away. Neji knew exactly how a cornered rat felt now; like impending death was about to drop like a ton of bricks on his shoulders.
"Get out," Tenten muttered, turning around and heading back for the kitchen of her little apartment.
That snapped Neji back to reality. "Tenten, I—"
"GET OUT!" She whipped around, her face red from shouting. "You did this to me!" She pointed to her stomach. "I don't wanna look at you! Get out!"
Neji hesitated, and was rewarded by another vase flying at his head. This one he just barely dodged, the lilies—courtesy of the Yamanaka family flower shop—sliding on water all over the wooden floor.
Neji was all too happy to run. Hard.
Neji spent the next two hours hiding in the branches—warmed by the summer sun—of a tree near where he trained often. If he wasn't mistaken, it was on the Nara compound, but the Nara family didn't really care who trained on their compound.
He was going to be a father. That was, he would be if Tenten didn't miscarry or have an abortion.
Neji would have wondered how his father reacted when he found out his mother was pregnant, except that the story Neji had always heard from Hiashi and his aunt—as long as Hinata and Hanabi's mother was alive—was that Hyuuga Hizashi had had absolutely no idea that he was a father until the day his ex-lover showed up on his doorstep and unceremoniously shoved an infant Neji into his arms.
Neji could sympathize.
Father… It was a completely foreign concept to him. The last time he'd dealt with a small child was when he agreed to baby-sit Kurenai-sensei's daughter Isako for the day. It hadn't gone well. The normally calm Kurenai had promised him that if he ever came within ten yards of her daughter again without someone else there she was going to nail him to a tree and eviscerate him. The quiet way she proclaimed this threat belied the way she was holding a kunai to his throat. Neji wasn't quite sure how Hinata had managed to hang around this woman for so long without her more violent impulses rubbing off.
Well, at least I don't have to worry about angry in-laws wanting to castrate me. Neji smiled wryly. Actually I don't think I have any in-laws. None that Tenten'll acknowledge, anyway.
But that was absolutely beside the point. He was going to be a father. In less than a year, there would be a doctor coming out of a hospital room telling him "It's a healthy boy/girl."
And what if the child had the Byakugan? Neji shuddered. He didn't want any child of his having to bear the burden of the Branch House cursed seal. Not now, not ever.
"Hey, Neji!" Neji was startled by that sharp cry, and reached for his kunai again. But when he looked down, he relaxed. Naruto, Shikamaru, Kiba and Choji were staring up at him.
"Why don't you come down here?" Naruto called through cupped hands.
Neji honestly had no idea how the four of them had figured out exactly what was going on between him and Tenten at the moment, but evidently someone had seen fit to inform his cohorts of everything that had transpired in the apartment that day.
Before he knew it, he was sitting at a table in the Akimichi family's favorite barbecue restaurant, Naruto and Shikamaru sitting at his shoulders, Kiba stroking Akamaru's back, and Choji trying to get him to eat the barbecue.
"So…" Shikamaru started, his already slanted eyes narrowed considerably. "Tenten's pregnant."
Neji didn't answer. He didn't have to.
Shikamaru's eyes narrowed further. "And you ran out of the apartment because…"
He had to answer this. "She told me to 'get out'." Neji felt a bite of defensive annoyance enter his voice.
They all looked at him like he was crazy. "Yeah, word to the wise, that's what you're not supposed to do when a girl tells you she's pregnant," Kiba muttered. "And we all thought you were a genius."
Shikamaru shook his head wearily, staring out one of the high, narrow windows at the other end of the restaurant where dappled sunlight glittered and scintillated. "You really shouldn't have run out of there like that, Neji. In that situation, even when a girl tells you to get out you to get out, you shouldn't. You should know. Tenten's already had a little powwow with the other girls about all this; girls do that, troublesome. They're not happy with you."
Neji groaned. "How bad is it?" And he thought his day couldn't possibly get worse.
"Well," Kiba started. "Hinata's trying not to take sides."
"Sakura-chan's not gonna be nice to you if she sees you."
"And Ino and Temari are straight up out for your blood," Shikamaru finished grimly.
That sounded about right. As much as he loved Tenten, Neji knew that every single one of her female friends—from shy, timid Hinata all the way up to Shizune at the hospital—had threatened him with severe bodily harm if he did anything bad to her, left her, etc. They'd probably be trying to make good on their promises.
"So what are you gonna do, Neji?" Naruto asked him, blue eyes wide open. Neji bit back a sigh. Despite everything society had done to the kid, Naruto still managed to pull off the wide-eyed innocent look with unequivocal sincerity.
"I can't go back," Neji tried to explain to them.
Again, Neji was being gaped at like he was some sort of sideshow freak. Choji spoke up first, confused. "Why not? This is your girlfriend and your unborn child we're talking about. Don't you want to be a father?"
"Yeah, you can't just walk out on them," Kiba interjected. For some reason, the whole idea seemed to hit a raw nerve with him.
"It's not just that." Neji groaned internally. How could he make them understand. He rubbed his forehead, subconsciously giving away the source of his anxiety.
When he put his hand on his forehead, Naruto at least seemed to understand. His eyes grew darker, decidedly embarrassed. "Oh," the blond said lamely.
Shikamaru took charge. "Okay, I think we all agree that Neji's going to have to lie low with one of us until he and Tenten work all this out." It was like he wasn't even considering the possibility that Neji wasn't going to go back.
Naruto's eyes lit up. "Me!"
"No!" Neji snapped immediately. He liked Naruto well enough, but he was pretty sure that a night alone with Uzumaki Naruto would end in a murder-suicide, or, if not that, an emergency trip to the hospital.
Shikamaru sighed. "Choji?"
The portly ninja shook his head. "No way, Ino comes around too much."
"Yeah, that's right and Temari's at my house too much too. Kiba?"
Kiba looked at the Nara like he had suddenly grown a second head. "Are you kidding? Considering what happened between my parents when I was little, if my mom ever found out the real reason he was there she'd kill him on the spot. What about Lee or Gai-sensei?"
Shikamaru snorted. "They're both on a mission right now. And even if they weren't, I get the feeling that they'd be fighting for the right to kill him right about now."
That was right. Neji had completely forgotten about that. Lee and Gai-sensei were going to kill him when they found out about this.
That left…
"Alright, Naruto. Neji's going to be staying with you tonight."
Naruto grinned. Neji groaned.
"I don't see what's got you so nervous, Neji," Naruto assured his older friend earnestly. "It's not like anyone ever visits me here."
And stepping into Naruto's homely little apartment, Neji could see why.
It was, if possible, even smaller than Tenten's three-room apartment. He saw only what seemed to be a living room, a small kitchen, and a bed pressed up against the wall of said living room.
When Neji's eyebrows rose, Naruto winced and blushed in embarrassment. "Yeah, there's no bathroom here. There's a public bathroom and shower downstairs; I usually just use them."
The second thing Neji noticed was the lack of vents in that room. It meant that Naruto had no central heating or cooling. It probably got to feeling like one of the outer circles of hell in summer, and one of the inner circles in winter. Neji hoped that the large window in the living room and the space heater pressed up against the opposite wall from the bed helped with that.
Who. the. Hell. gave him such indecent living quarters? Neji thought angrily. Small wonder Naruto was always out and about; if he lived here, he wouldn't want to spend too much time here either.
"You want the bed or the floor?" Naruto was talking to him, shaking his arm.
Neji looked down at the shorter boy. "The floor's fine."
"Okay, I'll get the spare set of sheets."
While Naruto was rummaging through a box under his bed (he probably used a laundromat to clean his sheets and his clothes; there didn't seem to be a washing machine here either), Neji leaned against the wall. Naruto's apartment for some reason was extremely reminiscent of Tenten's, except hers wasn't so bright. Her lighting didn't really work too well.
Even with the sun gone and the night stars shining weakly through smoke and smog, light shone in and added to the bright single light fixture on the ceiling.
When he looked back again, Naruto had rolled out a perfectly neat looking pallet with an incredibly inviting looking pillow at the top. The blond grinned. "Not bad for a knucklehead, huh?"
Neji smiled despite himself. Naruto hopped onto his bed and Neji laid down on his back on the pallet, arms folded behind his head. For a few minutes, they sat in silence. Neji counted his heartbeats; he wasn't sure what Naruto was doing.
"Hey, Neji, are you trying to avoid Tenten because of the…the…you know…"
"The seal?" Neji finished softly. Naruto had already seen it; it wasn't of much use trying to deny its existence around him.
"That's stupid." Naruto's voice was strangely calm, yet angry at the same time. "Tenten's not the sort of girl who's gonna get hung up over that, and you know it."
"It's not that, Naruto!" Neji snapped. He was surprised at himself. He hadn't realized how tense he was over all this. Naruto didn't understand at all. "Tenten knows about the seal; she doesn't care. It's just that… If a child of mine inherits my clan's bloodline limit—"
"You're afraid your kid'll get branded with the seal too," Naruto finished grimly. "Okay, first off Neji, I still think you're being stupid about all this."
"How so?" the Hyuuga prodigy asked coldly.
"Well, for one thing, your son/daughter might not even inherit the Byakugan. Tenten's not a member of the clan, and you're only half Hyuuga, right?"
"Right…" Neji really hadn't thought about that at all.
"Second, what the hell makes you think that if someone tries to slap a cursed seal on her kid, that Tenten will take it lying down?"
Neji grinned slightly. "Tenten would kill anyone who tried." He had an extremely humorous inner image of Tenten beating his uncle to a bloody pulp.
"Okay, glad we've established that. Finally…" Naruto moved and sat on the edge of the bed, making earnest and serious eye contact with Neji. "This is your kid we're talking about.
"You're gonna be a father, Neji. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; don't you dare tell me you're just gonna throw it away. Tenten's not the sort of girl you wanna walk away from either; if I were you, I'd be thanking God for my good luck."
Neji bit his lip. Suddenly, he realized that he was being stupid. It wouldn't be so bad having a child. And even if the child was in danger of being completely inducted into the Branch House, there would be more than one person fighting for the child's right to not have to cover their forehead. He wasn't so alone.
And Tenten… How could he ever forget Tenten?
He even felt good enough to torment Naruto. "Naruto…about your dating my cousin…"
The blond flinched, edging away from Neji. "Hey Neji, you aren't gonna throw me out a window again, are you?"
"If you don't answer my questions the right way, I just might."
Neji sighed and took in an exceptionally deep breath. Naruto, Kiba, and Choji all grinned and gave him the thumbs-up from down the hall; Shikamaru just smiled slightly.
He almost ran away, but Naruto caught the tensing in his muscles and gave him such a fierce glare that even if Neji had genuinely wanted to run he wouldn't have.
He knocked three times on the door. Within a heartbeat, Tenten answered the door. She was still in her nightclothes, her hair disheveled, and she looked like she had spent most of the night crying. Tenten was just one of those girls; when she cried, it was quite apparent on her face. She frowned, her eyes shifting. "Neji?"
Neji tried to smile; he only came out halfheartedly. He was trying not to flinch at how bloodshot her eyes were. "Tenten, can we talk about this?"
I just couldn't keep up the humorous mood.