A/N: Getting back to writing after a very long break! Please forgive me if this is a bit unpolished. I'm rather rusty.
What made Shino angry was not the money she lost. She had always been low maintenance and she could get by on what she had and he knew she was a good saver. What made him angry was not the pain in her eyes. He was a firm believer that each trauma only produced a finite amount of grief, so, to put things bluntly, she would get over it. What made him angry was the stuttering. Over a decade of speech therapy (most of which they had gone through together) unraveled. A hard-earned steady (albeit slow) tongue undone that fickle, philandering wretch. The humiliating divorce bludgeoned her composure, leaving her only with anxiety and self doubt. The stuttering was a manifestation of twisted nerves which she failed to suppress, too tumultuous to be hidden away under a veneer of calm.
What Shino saw when he heard her stutter was a decade of hard work down the drain, a regression toward a weaker, unhappier self. It reminded him or a time, years ago, when he had seen a newly formed beehive, about a month old, destroyed by bored teenagers. A home that the bees spent most of their six-week lifespans building, beaten down with a baseball bat (it had taken more swings than he thought) for the sake of a few laughs. They hadn't been thinking and Shino was glad the swarm had attacked them not long after. Clearly, Junpei hadn't been thinking either when he decided to break her heart, take her money, and humiliate her. Shino hated seeing years of hard work carelessly dismantled, and he hoped that one day bees or maybe even hornets would attack Junpei, waking him from his wanton reverie and crippling his frivolous mind with fear and agony.
"N-n-nobody knuh-knuh-knows I-I'm hu-hu-here."
"Then we will keep it that way," Shino answered.
They heard Kiba's bedroom door swing open followed by the soft padding of Kiba's socked feet on the carpet.
"Yeah. Uh-huh. OK. Alright, thanks boss." Kiba shut off his phone and turned to Hinata with a grin that made Shino wonder if Malmute was part of his ancestry..
"Get some sleep soon, kid. You got an interview with my boss tomorrow! You were an accountant, yeah?"
"I-I w-was a-a pr-pr-pro-programmer b-b-but I-I c-can a-a-also d-d-o - "
"Knew you could do it, kid!" Kiba embraced Hinata in a bear hug, burrowing her face in his board chest, and ruffled her hair.
Shino could only heard the muffled utterances of Hinata's gratitude and her small, elegant hands lightly patting Kiba's back.
"Hinata, feel free to stay here for as long as you need. The sleeper sofa has been prepared for you," Shino said.
Hinata chirped out a stifled thank you and gave him two thumbs up as Kiba continued to smother her.