a memory stick full of myspace friends
note1 i had so much fun writing so i hope you have just as much fun reading this!
note2 dedicated to cute boys at the laundromat and no wifi when traveling :-)
listening when will vampire weekend release a new album tbh
summary au / tenten and neji fake facebook date. it's really cute, she swears.
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One day a girl meets a boy.
That is the beginning. Or the one they're sticking with. (At least until a better one comes along.)
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Tenten runs into Neji in Brooklyn.
She's at a gallery opening for her friend Sai. It's being held above what used to be a great Dutch bakery but is now a 'female friendly' sex store and maybe Tenten's already drunk three glasses of free champagne. It's free because she knows the artist and Tenten knows the artist because the last time Tenten was drunk she met Sai and somehow Sai convinced her to pose nude for a marble sculpture. Standing in front of her likeness, Tenten squints. It doesn't look much like her at all. All flat chest and sleek, elegant lines.
It's only when Tenten catches a glance at the price sticker, she whistles.
Three thousand dollars.
She doesn't know whether to feel flattered or insulted. It's easier to go get a refill.
It's by the bar she happens to catch sight of a guy who looks vaguely familiar. It takes a moment but it clicks. Neji. Hinata's cousin. She remembers him because of the suits and the pretty hair. Except he's not wearing one, nor is his hair free. Instead he's exchanged the fortune 500 business professional look for after hour's smart casual Hugo Boss, and the loose hair for a loose ponytail.
"Hello, Hinata's cousin," she says.
"Hello, Hinata's college roommate who ate all her food," he says in return.
And okay. Ouch. Good one Pretty Hair Boy. She didn't remember him being capable of that. But than again she mostly only remembers how he made three hundred thousand dollars (three hundred thousand dollars) during his freshman summer break from stocks. During her summer break she hung out with her best friend Lee and her other high school friends at their local community pool. Those fast times were only interrupted by the three days a week she spent babysitting just like every other kid her age apart from Neji who made three hundred thousand dollars.
She's almost twenty-eight.
Currently she has a grand total of twenty-five hundred dollars in her checking account and most of that is from her mother and set aside to help her pay rent. It is more than a little depressing. But then Kiba, her new friend behind the bar, opens a fresh bottle of champagne just for her. Kiba is a good guy. A really great one, in fact, and after a sip she decides to show Neji her sculpture. It feels like the right thing to do.
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The next morning she wakes up with someone's number scrawled all the way down her arm in purple permanent marker.
"It's kind of second grade," she tells Neji when she calls the number and he answers.
"What kind of second grader were you?" he retorts.
She should be too hung over for that kind of talk. But apparently not.
"A good time one," she tells him, fishing around her nightstand for a scrunchie. "What kind were you?"
"I went to boarding school," he tells her as if that were that.
Good try, but that is most certainly not that — not when he went to 'boarding school'.
"So you were a super good time one?" she asks, mostly because she can.
On the other end of the line, he snorts. God. It really is too early.
Apparently she says that aloud, because he sort of laughs. It's a chuckle, really. "It's quarter past eleven, Tenten."
Fuck him.
"It's a Saturday. I'm allowed to sleep in."
"It's a Tuesday."
Shit. That would make her two days late to her mother's Sunday dinner.
But on the bright side, now she didn't have to go home for four whole days. Also Tuesday was a weekday, but not one of the ones she worked or had tutorials or class. Unfortunately, Monday was.
Neji seemed to be on her wave length. "I'm in the area. Get dressed. I'll come and take you to lunch."
"Don't tell me what to do," she says because in her experience it's the sort of thing that needs to be said right from the start.
"Of course, Tenten." he replies. "I wouldn't dream of it."
Not great, but good enough. Tenten allows it and ends the call.
It is only upon pulling herself out of her bed, she realizes two things. Firstly, she fell asleep without taking off her make-up or her second favorite pair of glittery false eyelashes. Secondly, she fell asleep without getting changed either. The silver lining is the latter discovery, or more specifically the discovery that she didn't spill anything on her lucky red dress. It also helps that she apparently slept like the dead and thus didn't wrinkle it too badly with frivolous tossing and turning. That's why her lucky dress is her lucky dress and when Neji turns up she's still wearing it. (Why mess with a good thing?)
Anyway, the first thing she tells him is that she's a grad student. It feels like the thing to say when she catches sight of his watch and the cut of his suit.
For some reasons he eyes her like he does not believe her.
She asks what he is.
It turns out not to be the best question.
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The thing about Neji is he's around. NYC's a pretty big city, but somehow they keep running into each other until eventually they get tired of doing that and just start calling each other up instead. It's easier. Also, it's more time efficient. Somehow, over the course of a few weeks, it becomes habit.
"If you told me that you were going to that Asian fusion place on fifth, I would have come too," she tells him when they meet up for breakfast on Saturday morning.
He rolls his eyes. "You just wanted me to get a reservation."
A lie. A blatant lie. She feels hurt.
"I don't need a reservation," she tells him, wrinkling her nose, as if a 'reservation' is a dirty word. (Hint: it is.)
"Let me guess, you know the bartender?" he asks rhetorically. "You always know the bartender and that is why you don't need my help to get a table."
"I don't always known the bartender."
"You do. You knew about Brussels' new bartender before anyone."
"That's because my best friend's boyfriend used to date his second cousin."
Neji gives her a look. It isn't fair of him. It isn't her fault she knows more people than him. She's personable, okay. Additionally, she's social. A winning combination. As far as she can tell, Neji should be thankful. If it weren't for her, he'd hardly do anything but work and send his assistant tie shopping.
That reminds her. "Your assistant wouldn't put me through to you when I called yesterday."
"I was at a meeting."
"A meeting? I told him I was your cousin — not Hinata, Hanabi — and that it was urgent, Neji. What sort of assistant wouldn't put me through to you?"
"One that, perhaps, recognized your voice?"
"He didn't recognize my voice," Tenten tells him, because Shino didn't. Tenten's impersonation of a threat was flawless.
"He did. Around the office he calls you my mildly vicious friend."
Now, that is insulting. "I am not vicious."
Neji nods. "I told him that. I said, 'No, Tenten is just a small girl with very good scalpel skills.'"
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So yeah, in essence the thing about Neji is he's always around and because she's always around too, they happen to run into each other more than they don't run into each other. It doesn't take them long to transition from that to friendship.
(In her phone, he's listed as Neji "Good Times" Hyuuga and in his, she's just Tenten because he is pedestrian like that whereas she has a creative soul.)
Not everything is complicated.
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In the middle of the week, Tenten, partly because she can but mostly because she wants to (and okay, also because it's a weeknight), invites Neji out to the bar to see this band her friend's, friend's aunt know the drummer from. There might have been a few more degrees of separation added in there because the drummer blinks when Tenten and her friends go over to introduce themselves. He's a nice guy though and when he and his band finally get on stage, they dedicate their first song to them.
Neji doesn't exactly make a face after the first few bars, but he does tell her that they're awful.
Tenten can't help but give him a look. Because really, wasn't that the point?
"The lead singer is drunk."
Tenten rolls her eyes. "The lead singer of the band is always drunk, Hyuuga. It's only after years and years of hard rock and roll living they find God and/or get married to a Swedish supermodel, they get sober. How do you not know this? Shame on you."
Neji rolls his eyes right back at her and steals a sip of her beer. "I don't know what I was thinking."
The sip turns into a gulp which turns into her half full glass becoming completely empty.
"Hey!"
"I'll buy you another," he tells her as if it's nothing. And, fuck him, it probably is.
"You better," she retorts, because come on. Rude.
He snorts but agreeably throws an arm over her shoulder when one of Tenten's friends points her camera at them and snaps a picture.
The next day that picture is up on facebook.
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Not surprisingly, all Tenten's friends adore Neji. But they would.
He just has a way with people. Other than being intelligent, handsome, and cultured, there is something about the manner he interacts with people. He's strangely polite, if not cold, but despite who he's introduced too, the timber of his voice always matches the situation he is in. It doesn't matter what he ends up conversing about; within minutes, people find themselves telling him their unwanted problems as if he were an old friend rather than a new acquaintance uncomfortably looking at either at the space besides their head or her for help. (Neji, shy. It's hilarious.)
Without fail, people walk away half in love with him. Basically he's pretty much like the little black dress of dinner party guests. It's kind of disgusting.
So, completely unsurprisingly, the next morning Tenten wakes up to three of her friend's calling her about him, raving and not so covertly asking his currently relationship status.
"Look it up yourself," she finds herself grumbling.
He is amused when she tells him. Or he could be amused by her standing in his office as Shino seems to be (she saw the corner of his mouth curl when he buzzed her into Neji's office).
"No, it's all the American Apparel lycra," he comments. "You look like a lost ice skater."
Looking up from his paperwork (wasn't everything online nowadays?), he smirks. It's annoying.
"From the 80s," he adds as if that's something that needs to be added.
It makes the set of her jaw tighten. "Well, you look like an extra from Greed."
"The original or the Shia Lebeouf one I know you watched at my place while I was in Geneva?"
"The original. Duh."
"Then I choose to take your comment as a compliment," he grins up at her. "The original was epic. The sequel was crap."
Damn. He's right.
"I hate it when you go on business trips," she tells him, sitting down on the edge of his desk.
"I know," he replies, handing her some envelopes to either sort or give to his assistant on her way out. "You've told me before."
Though he's explained exactly what is he does, the only thing Tenten really gets is it involves a great deal of business trips. He was gone an entire week on the last one. House sitting was fun. But house sitting an apartment with its own media room, open plan living space and private access to a rooftop garden was always going to be fun. Except without him, it was too boring for words. It got so bad she ended up going out for drinks with some of the students in her tute groups. They were all under twenty one and none of them knew anything about 90s boy bands. It was tragic. She felt so old, especially when they pulled out their fake ids.
But he's back now and that is good news.
"My friend's throwing a Halloween party."
"One of your friends is always throwing a party."
That's true, but only because Tenten's friends are uniformly pretty awesome. It's not the point though.
"You want to go as the Holy Trinity? Sasuke can be our Batman." Sasuke works in radiology and is, according to reliable sources (ie. his girlfiend), a lame human being and an equally lame boyfriend. Tenten, of course, tells Neji all this.
He puts down his pen. She can tell he's trying not to smile. "No. Not really."
To Tenten's ears it doesn't sound like a very firm "no" so she chooses to ignore it and turn up at his apartment on Friday with her hair down, false glittery eyelashes stuck on, and a Wonder Woman suit that she found on ebay for ten dollars (shipping cost twice that much, but like that counted) on. He groans when he opens his door and sees her. But he lets her take him out.
That's the thing about Neji.
He might act like a stick in the mud, but if she worked on him even a little bit, he'd give in, even to dressing up like Clark Kent, glasses and button-up and all. There was a lot of rolling of eyes and disgruntled noises on his end, especially when she was pining his hair, but hey.
They lose the group portion because their Batman, expectedly, decided to throw on a logo t-shirt and call it a day, but Neji being Neji (dressed as a news reporter with a secret identity and adorable curl) is everyone's clear favorite.
The next day, he and his best dressed sash features in every second photograph of her upload onto facebook.
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Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she hands him an aspirin and a glass of water. "Did you have a good time?"
He cracks open his eyes. "Yeah. But I feel like shit now."
"Me too." she replies.
"Liar," he tells her.
She doesn't care.
It takes him a few hours, but by late afternoon he's well enough to borrow a pair of sunglasses and venture outside with her for a late breakfast. Over pancakes and Bloody Mary's, they nurse what's left of their hangovers and try to fill their stomach with something that is half way good for them.
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They're still a little worse for wear in the evening when they go to one of her department admin people's house warming. It's in Queens and the weather is improbably good, and without even trying Tenten manages to get Neji tipsy on out of date eggnog that someone had decided to serve for some reason she doesn't really understand.
In the background, Tenten hears someone bring out an ukulele. It's really too early in the evening for that, but who is she to judge. Poking Neji with the umbrella from her drink, she makes him make space on the deck chair he is cruelly bogarting from her. She's the one wearing platform heels. She deserves first dibs to any and all deck chairs. Behind her she hears someone giggle and the flash of a smart phone.
He raises an eyebrow but scoots for her anyway. "Photos like that are the reason Hinata thinks you're my girlfriend."
"You wish I was your girlfriend," she replies archly.
She's seen the people he dates, or, she figures, the people Hiashi tells him to date. The majority of them had intimidated the hell out of her; all manicured nails, polished wingtips, and driving ambition. They last (or he does), for a few weeks at the least, and a few months at the most. During which they mostly ignore him. She doesn't get the attraction but for the last whatever she's been rocking the single life so to each their own.
"My uncle would be so fucked off if you were my girlfriend."
And —
Oh —
"He would, wouldn't he?" she says, because Hiashi would be.
Neji meets her gaze, the curl of his mouth crocked and amused. "He totally would."
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And right then and there, it all starts.
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Okay, maybe it really starts on the subway back into the city (Neji's place has a roof garden, okay, the after-party has to be there, she insists), when Neji and Tenten borrow their friend Ino's iPhone and update their relationship status from 'single' to 'it's complicated,' and finally to 'in a relationship'.
"Your dog days are over, my amigo," she tells Neji when they're finished; pressing a fuchsia colored kiss to the corner of his mouth and snapping a new profile pic while she's at it.
"What the hell, Tenten," he snorts, "If anything it's your dog days that are over now that we're facebook official."
"Fuck you," she tells him, sticking out her tongue. "Now you're my facebook boyfriend so you have to be nice to me. That means no more corporate high flyers or business tycoons."
Neji rolls his eyes, "And that means no busboys, struggling musicians, tenure professors, or freshman students for you."
"You are a horrible facebook boyfriend," she complains.
"Too bad, I'm the only one you've got."
She makes a face. "Yeah, too bad."
A few of their rude eavesdropping friends who obviously don't want any of Tenten's amazing cocktails snigger at them. It's very bad taste. She tells them so and also tells them they are officialky cut off from her awesome mint juleps and happy fun time juice. Because her bartender skills are that good, they look disappointed.
It serves them right.
Or it would, but halfway to Neji's place, everyone seems to forget. Except Neji makes a face when he catches her flirting with the sound tech from the bar no one but Neji likes downtown.
"We're only facebook official, you cockblock," she reminds him.
But Neji doesn't care. Dropping a kiss on the top of her head, he tells her to suck it up buttercup. (He actually says the 'buttercup' bit.) It's very annoying. Of course their friends find it hilarious. But they would. They're the same people who spend most of their days writing academic papers on the role of the woman in Moby Dick.
"You're facebook boyfriend is hot," Sakura says, snapping a pic.
Neji is. Tenten can't argue about that. He's rich and looks like a full time model and has the brain of an astronaut from the 1960s.
Sakura nods. (By her side, Neji has adopted a look of faint amusement.)
And okay, Tenten apparently said all of that aloud.
"I am a very lucky girl," Tenten concludes, because as the saying goes, in for a penny, in for a pound.
However she doesn't feel that lucky late the next morning when she wakes up still in Neji's roof garden. With bits of shrubbery in her hair and bare feet, she goes down to his apartment and bangs on the door until someone answers it. That someone turns out to be Sakura. She looks even worse than her.
"I hope you didn't spend the night fooling around with my facebook boyfriend while I was inebriated," she tells her, wagging her finger obnoxiously.
Sakura laughs — then winces almost immediately at the noise.
Leaving her by the door with her sleeping boyfriend, Tenten makes for Neji's room. Stepping over more than a few of her friends, she kicks off her skinny jeans and leaves them in her wake. The king-sized bed is calling her. She can hear it, that lusty siren and its lusty siren calling sheets; each of the hundred thread count singing to her. Neji barely moves when she crawls into bed besides him.
Vaguely she hears him mutter something suspiciously along the lines of 'go away' but it's too early to care.
Patting his hand, she tells him to go back to sleep.
It's good advice. She takes it herself.
Only when she wakes up she discovers that Hinata has called and left a message.
It blinks at Tenten and once open it most consists of question marks and exclamation points. Not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.
Hauling herself out of bed, Tenten goes to wash her face with cold water and some of Neji's fancy pants soap. It's not great but it more or less does the trick. With clumsy fingertips, she wipes away trials of mascara and and eyeliner and, a little bit more awake, calls Hinata back.
Hinata, of course, is obnoxiously sweet and cheerful when she answers.
Tenten cuts her off before she can even get started. "Don't get your panties in a twist. It's just a facebook romance."
She sighs. "You're so lame."
"I am not," Tenten retorts because she totally isn't. She is, however, now cradling the gallon of Ben and Jerry's she found in Neji's fridge in her lap. "I'm making a statement to your dad. Has he gotten that stick up his ass removed yet, by the way?"
"Your statements suck. Like that time you did that semester in Beijing and refused to speak a word of English to any of us."
"I was attempting to appreciate the culture!"
"You were being a pretentious loser and made your mother worry," Hinata frowns.
Roommates are annoying.
On the other end of the line, Hinata sighs again. "So you aren't dating Neji for real?"
"Nope."
"You are so lame."
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The following morning, just after Tenten has somehow managed to finish her tute, Hiashi calls to tell her Neji was unexpectedly called into a conference call and thus would not be able to make their lunch date — apparently they don't have lunch anymore. They have lunch dates. It's awesome. He sounds rather indignant about having to call her anyway.
"Oh my," Tenten says (perhaps in an accent). "What a downer."
"Yes," Hiashi replies. "Quite."
In the afternoon, she drops by Neji's office just because she can.
"I like being your girlfriend. The perks are awesome."
Without looking up from his work, Neji tells her no, she can't steal office supplies from his work and yes, she'll have to give Shino back the pens.
"Shino is your assistant. I'm your girlfriend. I can have all the pens I want."
"You're my facebook girlfriend, Tenten. You don't get pens. Only a real girlfriend gets to pilfer biros."
She scowls. (Neji doesn't even bother to glance at her.)
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So yeah, fake dating. It's kind of awesome. Tenten isn't sure why she hadn't tried it before. It's too easy. She's even signed them up for a couple's book club and pilates. Mostly they hang out and do the same sort of stuff they did before, only they get Ino and Sakura to take a lot of photographs and and with what free time Tenten has between university demands, she takes to spending it annoying Neji online, naming animals after him on farmsville and Neji does the same minus the naming animals part. When they do meet up, he bitches her out for the stupid (charming, she corrects) nicknames and it's sort of just like normal except for how her friends have stopped trying to set her up and how Neji's high powered business shaped friends have stopped talking about the high powered business shaped people Neji scores on a regular basis.
"Pumpkin cake?"
"Don't hate, you love it," she tells him because he totally does. "Besides, I googled popozuda and I am not a fan."
"At least it's not Pumpkin cake."
Tenten gives him a look. "Your pet name for me is big ass."
"I meant it as a compliment."
She narrows her eyes. "For the record, I don't take it as one."
"Then you're simply narrow-minded," he replies flippantly.
It's a shame he doesn't try to flip his hair too or something. Neji has very pretty hair.
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The thing about the internet is how easy it is to make your life look better than it is.
"I'm not going out with you and your tute group," Neji informs her right off the bat.
Tenten makes a face. "Why not?"
He gives her a look. "They're teenagers."
"They're young and beautiful and all of them promised to write awesome stuff about how awesome and in love we are."
"They're teenagers," Neji repeats.
"Don't be a stick in the mud," Tenten whines, throwing her hands in the air. "It'll look great on facebook."
"No."
Well, she's heard him say that before.
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Before, she used to dream about med school and performing open-heart surgeries and saving babies. She still dreams about the surgery part. But it's different now. Tenten would rather be in a lab, she thinks, than an operating room.
Currently, Tenten is thinking about teaching or research. Her mom was a professor. A good one. Tenten isn't that great though. Most of the students she teaches as a TA in the biology department kind of just manage to put up with her. For some reason though, Neji actually thinks she'd be an excellent teacher.
"People listen to you," he tells her simply as if it's some kind of indisputable truth.
But he would say that.
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For the record, the photos totally do look great online.
("I hate you."
"No, you don't. You adore me. I'm the light of your life, the best part of your day and the icing on your metaphorical cake. You said so on twitter.")
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In the middle of winter, Tenten comes down hard with the flu. It's not really a surprise. It had been going around the science department. Most of the students and staff seem to have gotten it or are on the verge of coming down it. It takes her out pretty hard though, and she ends up spending the weekend in bed.
As Neji is real life awesome as well as facebook awesome, he comes over with vegetable soup.
"Did you make that?" she coos. She pinches his cheek for good measure too because Neji is totally the type of guy to make soup from scratch to impress someone, alright?
He snorts. "Fuck no. I bought it from that deli near my place."
"You are shattering all my illusions about you," she tells him because he totally is. "If you were really dating me, would you make me soup from scratch?"
Sitting down on her bed and helping himself to some of her crackers, Neji shakes his head. "Please, Tenten."
She elbows him. Tenten has sharp elbows. She's very proud of them.
"I'd lie and tell you it was my grandmother's recipe."
"Smooth," she tells him.
"Yeah. I know. It's a real panty dropper."
He says it so casually it makes her laugh hard enough she ends up snorting soup out of her nose.
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Neji ends up staying over for most of the night. Together they veg out on her couch and watch the televised marathon of Princess Diaries and late night informercials. It's something they've never really done before, mostly because Tenten can't keep still and they always seem to be out. It's nice. So nice, Tenten wonders why they don't do it more often. As much as she loves going out (NYC is NYC, after all), there is something so pleasant about staying in and having Neji's stupid awkwardness all to herself.
The only downside is it kind of makes her feel his absence all the more when he leaves for a business trip a week and a half later.
"It's only for a fortnight," he reminds her as she watches him pack.
"A 'fortnight'? You and your Ivy League words," she sasses, ignoring the look he gives her because she's a teaching assistant at Columbia. She fiddles instead with a pair of his business socks — black, fine virgin wool, calf length; the most proper of professional socks.
Nerd.
"I'll be back before you know it."
He isn't even gone and she doesn't know what to do with herself.
"It'll give you a chance to write 'I miss you,' messages on my wall and quote angsty lyrics in your daily status update."
That kind of is a silver lining.
He grins, taking the pair of his socks from her. "Plus we can skype each other."
She grins too. "We can skype sex each other."
He throws the pair of socks at her.
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Neji ends up extending his trip.
It sucks.
She winds up going paint balling with Naruto and some undergrad engineering students.
It's a new low.
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When Neji comes back, he is tired and has dark purple circles under his eyes.
"You need a holiday," she decides for him, because he really looks like he does.
He blinks. "I just spent three weeks in California."
"Well," Tenten sighs, "maybe a staycation instead."
"A staycation?" he asks, cracking one eye open.
"Yeah, why not?"
"You are ridiculous, Tenten." he concludes, but he still lets her dress them up in fake vacation outfits. He even lets her steal flowers from the lobby and make them both lei's. It's lame and stupid and they end up buying plastic lei's instead but he's laughing in the picture she snaps. When they're done, they camp out in his apartment, make s'mores in his thousand dollar oven and eat them in the bed while watching movies that take place in tropical places. Like Lilo and Stitch.
"You guys are so embarrassing," Ino comments on Monday morning, already looking at brain tissue under a microscope in the station over. "My news feed was full of your lovey-dovey vomit all weekend. It totally impeded me facebook stalking my ex."
"Jealous?" Tenten waggles her eyebrows.
"No shit."
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Three weeks is a long trip. A week is usually the longest period of time Neji spends away and normally when he comes back to New York City it's with a bag full of duty free stuff rather than slumped shoulders and dark bags under his eyes. It takes a while but eventually Neji admits that Hiashi has cancer.
Hinata and Hanabi don't know yet.
Hiashi hates her.
Hiashi is dying.
Tenten doesn't know what to think about that. She tries to stay something. That. Maybe. But it comes out wrong.
"Why does it matter so much to you?" Neji asks her.
She wants to ask why doesn't it matter to him? Why is he so distant from everything?
"Tenten," he says, quiet and she should stop.
She should stop and go flirt with the waiter or tell him about this fair trade market this guy she knows is thinking about starting. She should. She knows she should. She should stop, but she can't.
"Of course it matters," he tells her, spitting the words at her like pulled teeth.
And —
Of course it does.
She knew it did. She just made him say it aloud.
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She wants to apologize the next time she sees Neji but doesn't know how.
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"You can't control these things," Neji says quietly. She doesn't respond.
"It's not up to you."
And no. It's not. Just like the things Hiashi knows about her. It's about her. But somehow not; not the her who calls out students when they disrespect the cavaders, not the one who charges crappy films on Neji's cable bill, and still doesn't know what to do with her life. Just the her that Hiashi remembers. Or wanted to remember. She's not nineteen anymore and even when she was, Hiashi didn't really know her. Not really. He doesn't know her now either. He might see everything on her facebook account, but that isn't her. It isn't even half of her. It isn't even a quarter.
"Sometimes we don't get to pick our roles, we just have to play them," he tells her, and he would know.
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Neji's played every role. Every one of them, up to and including her boyfriend.
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There are many things Tenten isn't.
But she is honest.
She doesn't want a facebook boyfriend. She just wants Neji.
She probably always did, right from the very start when he looked at Sai's sculpture and commented on Tenten's geometric tits in that indifferent trust-me-I'm-a-professional-professional of voice of his and made her laugh.
There is nothing ironic about what she feels for Neji. She's never been good an actor. Never been good at anything really, despite what Neji may believe. (And he's always believed in her despite the fact she's had around a dozen part time jobs in the time they've been friends and still hasn't figured out what she wants to do with her life.)
So yes, Tenten has always been honest with herself.
She wants to always be brave too.
But honesty is one thing, bravery is another.
There are many things easier than being brave. Not breathing a word is one option. A charade is a character after all. She might not be a very good actress, but she more or less knows how to let an act carry on. They could keep posting stupid photographs and calling each other equally stupid names. They've done it for months. It would be easy to continue.
It'd be simple.
Tenten's never wanted simple though.
Neji isn't simple.
Neji is good and kind, but he isn't simple.
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The truth is Hiashi doesn't matter. Not to Tenten anyway. But Neji does. So very much.
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"Why didn't you tell him the truth?" Tenten finds herself asking the following night on the cab ride to Ino's birthday party. "That we're not really dating?"
It's dark and cold in the taxi. The heat is on but she doesn't feel it. Not even a little. All she can feel is Neji's arm around her shoulders and the fine wool of his jacket against her cheek. She is so in love she cannot see straight. Now she has stopped pretending, that is all she can feel. She is so in love she cannot see anything but him.
He is watching the lights of the city as they drive from her end of town down to Ino's party.
At her question he turns and looks down at her. "I don't know. Maybe I wanted you to decide for yourself."
She bites her lip.
"I wanted him to like you. Eventually." A beat later. "You're my best friend."
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(The remainder of the cab ride passes in silences.)
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When they arrive, Ino is delighted to see them. With streamers in her hair and dressed in Tenten's lucky dress, she throws her arms around them and hugs them hello. Most of the attendees are mutual friends or friends of friends. There is a feeling of warmth to the table and something inside Tenten's heart breaks a little because she wants Neji to always have this. There is nothing else she wants more than for him to always be surrounded by people who make him laugh and who will care about his day and remember to tease him about his day and remember to tease him about looking like he walked out of a hair shampoo commercial.
For so long he didn't have this.
He never speaks of it, but she can tell. The years he spent abroad were just that. Years spent in a foreign country where he worked and travelled and sent his assistants out to buy fancy ties. She didn't have similar years. Hers were different. She always had friends but now she has Neji and somehow her life is just better with him in it.
At the head of the table, Naruto teases Neji about something stupid.
Tenten looks at him.
There is color in Neji's cheeks from the wine and he ducks his head when Ino presses a glittery lipstick kiss to his cheek.
It scares Tenten a little, but she can be brave. If she can be honest, she can be brave.
She can tell him the truth. She can do that. She will not make him choose though. He will always have this table of friends no matter if she is or isn't his real girlfriend. They are his friends too, not just hers. And so, after dinner, when they go back to the cafe near his place for a late night coffee, she tells him.
"I want to be your real girlfriend," she says, after they've ordered. It isn't great or poetically stated, but it's what she wants.
He is one of her best friends too. Everything is better when he is around. Everything matters more when he is there. She doesn't want wall posts or status updates or to play stupid childish games anymore. It's been years since she allowed herself to want more, but she does, so very much. The realization feels overdue.
Neji looks taken back as the barista hands them their drinks. Double espresso for him, hot dark chocolate with extra whipped cream for her. "Tenten?"
He opens his mouth and closes it.
She makes herself smile. She makes herself be brave for just a little bit longer.
"It's okay," she says.
Maybe it isn't. But she told him. There isn't much else she can do.
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He — he is — he asks for time.
She gives it to him.
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There is a certain sharpness to him, a hardness; something that Tenten sees less now, but remembers clearly from when he was just her roommate's cousin. Sometimes it's still there; a bite to his words, an edge in the expression in his eyes and a hesitance to his manner — a need to prove himself. Tenten knows this because Hiashi did the same thing to Hinata. That's why she thinks, maybe, just maybe, at the end of the day it isn't about facebook shares or money or recognition. Maybe it's about what one person can do to another.
At one point Hiashi cared for them.
At one point, perhaps Hiashi even loved them.
At one point or another, he must have.
Otherwise, why would he have bothered to hurt them?
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It's been years and even though she shouldn't, she still remembers the way he could make Hinata feel when she let him.
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Tenten can give Neji time, but her life continues. She works and she sees her friends and annoys her students and nothing stops or grinds to a halt. Life doesn't work that way. Neji is still there, their friends connect them and maybe her heart aches, but if it didn't she'd worry.
Then one day she comes home from Lee's to find him waiting for her.
"You brought soup," Tenten says, when she sees the tupperware sitting on her counter.
The corners of his mouth quirk up, "I made it myself."
Something stupid flutters in her chest.
"A family recipe?"
"Why yes," Neji replies, smiling crookedly. "My grandmother's in fact."
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"Wait, but I'm not sick."
"No, but you are lovesick."
"…I'm breaking up with you."
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the end
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endnote stupid awkward neji who studied political science in college is my favorite neji (also med school drop out tenten)! i actually had fun thinking about college majors for this universe so you should definitely ask me about those (be a sweetheart and leave a review!)
(ps. shikamaru is getting his phD in metaphysics and hinata studied classics, you can't tell me otherwise)