This is dedicated to the couplings I veer away from, because normally I can't find good storylines for them. But today inspiration came a-knockin', and I listened to it.
Enjoy, and a Very Merry Christmas to y'all on FanFiction! Show some spirit and review!
Note: Anything that makes little to no sense in this can be attributed to the fact that I have drunk rather a lot of Advocaat and read way too many romance novels this past week.
And yes, next week I will make an effort to start work again on The Changing Lives of Hinata Hyuuga and a new bandfic (!). I've been crazy busy and I can't apologise enough. Thanks for believing in me ^_^
And a Merry Christmas To You, Too
The den was where they always met.
It was a crude little wood cottage that Hinata had played in since she was a child with a door that didn't shut properly and open, glassless windows. She liked it because nobody else ever went there. He liked it because it was so unlike the rest of the crisp, emotionless Hyuga compound. Imperfect, but still beautiful in its own way.
A figure all dressed in white pushed it open fully and slipped in.
Kiba smiled. "Hey."
Hinata slunk into the room and froze.
"Y-you scared me, Kiba. I thought you were Neji."
Kiba wrinkled his nose. "Like that guy would ever come here." Seeing the look on Hinata's face, he decided not to continue with his anti-Neji tirade.
"So, uh … what's up?" he asked. Hinata sighed. "Nothing. Just not in the mood to watch my family hobnobbing with a bunch of old, rich perverts on Christmas Eve."
The boy grinned. "Ouch."
Hinata shrugged, apathetic. "It's true. All I'm good for is getting married off. The sweet, snow-white little virgin." She sat down primly on the windowsill, the weak rays of sun illuminating her face.
He stopped kicking at snow. "S'that so?"
The lavender-eyed girl allowed herself a mysterious smile. "They think."
"So you've really-? Where-? With who-? Hey, does Neji know?" he ended his string of unfinished questions. Hinata shook her hair out of her face.
"No, because I haven't. Yet." Kiba let out a long, slow breath. It made patterns in the cold winter air.
"Way to get a guy's hopes up." The black-haired girl looked up at the sprig of mistletoe hanging above them. Hung by a new and naïve maid, it was the happiest-looking thing in the whole compound.
"Well, it's never too late, right?"
Kiba noticed that unlike most girls this time of year, her lips weren't chapped or over-glossed. They were perfectly full and soft.
Thank God for pink Vaseline.
"Christmas is overrated." The blond boy sounded unusually thoughtful as he hung over the bunkbed, shredding pieces of tinsel. Sakura swiped at them as they fell into her hair.
"Baka, stop it. I'm tired." There was no playful edge to her voice, just a weariness and barely-concealed irritation that usually came before a punch. Naruto decided to heed the warning.
"Sorry. I know you must be tired from all the hospital work. How comes there are so many patients at this time of year, anyway?"
Sakura shook her hair for a final time, and, having looked in the mirror, absentmindedly began to pick up the tinsel from off the floor and unwind. "Old people and pneumonia. Drunk people. Car crashes. Little kids messing around on ice. You know. The usual."
Naruto swung down from the bed and landed silently. He was wearing red shorts with little Christmas trees on them and nothing else. Sakura rolled her eyes.
"Are all you boys totally impervious to the cold?" Sakura said bitterly, and immediately regretted it. "Ack, listen to me. I sound like a forty-year-old nun."
"Yeah, you do," Naruto agreed enthusiastically, too restless and bored to worry about being hit.
Sakura glared at Naruto. "Well, thank you so much."
"De nada, señorita bonita." He bowed and stuck out his tongue. "C'mon. Lighten up! What happened to the Sakura who used to play drinking games with me and let me hold her hair back as she threw up and make out in dark and sticky corners of dirty bars?"
She sighed. "I'm due back at the hospital in three hours."
"Hospital, schmospital." He grabbed a drawstring bag and threw random winter clothing into it. Sakura watched him, her green cat eyes narrowing. Her lips turned downwards.
"Okay, enough with the pissy faces. We're going out." Naruto zipped up his hoodie and rummaged further in the cupboard. Sakura winced as a clunk resounded throughout the corridor, then a face surrounded by matted blond hair reappeared, carrying something coloured the same cerulean blue as his eyes. "Score!"
It was a toboggan.
"Can you say, 'Happy time!'?" Naruto raised his eyebrows in a perfect Borat impersonation, sweeping off the toboggan.
"But what if a little kid falls down in the ice and I'm not there?" Sakura giggled, sounding much more like a pretty girl in her early twenties and not a woman on the brink of a midlife crisis.
"Then … we'll hope it's Konohamaru." He scooped her up, dumped her on the toboggan and dragged her out of the apartment, her screams mingling with the crunch of plastic on snow.
"Your drawings are really pretty."
Sai glanced at the blond girl, still clad in fishnets and purple leather in winter, and asked a simple question that had been bugging him for the past two hours.
"Aren't you cold?"
"I'm a ninja. We don't get cold. Especially not after that beating you gave me."
The joke was wasted on Sai.
"A kunoichi, you mean. And I wasn't that harsh."
Ino opened her mouth to reply, then decided against it. Shikamaru was in Suna, 'training' with Temari, Chouji was bingeing, and Naruto and Sakura … well, she was sick of trying to matchmake. Let them work it out. They were so perfect for each other, it wasn't even funny.
She was sick of trying to fill the loneliness inside herself with late-night vodka shots and hordes of drunken jounins. So when Sai was looking for a partner for a training session, she'd looked at his midriff and happily volunteered.
Now, bruised and battered to within an inch of her life, lank hair hanging limply in her signature ponytail and drained, Ino could barely stand. She'd accepted Sai's invite for a coffee, but was starting to regret it slightly.
She slumped at the table and watched his shirt ride up as he reached for the sugar.
Well, only slightly.
It was freezing outside, but Hinata's fur-lined coat insulated them both. It was weird, Kiba reflected. She didn't make a sound like Ino or Tenten. Just stared at him with huge, purple eyes and quietly acquiesced.
She was like a snowflake. A pretty pattern that thrived in year-round winter. And if you held her tight enough, she'd melt.
They were both so content, so glazed, so caught up in the moment, that they didn't notice the approaching footsteps. Didn't hear the breath catch. Didn't leap up to see the small footprints left by the owner of the breath outside the cabin.
"That was so much fun." The blond boy was adorably pink-cheeked and out of breath.
"Yeah? Tell that to my tush."
Still bemused, she brushed the snow off her sweater. "I still haven't forgiven you for that." But there was no anger in her voice now, just a kind of happy disbelief. She sidled up to him.
"Hey, Naru-kun," she whispered. Her breath was hot on his cheek. Naruto tried to think of an intelligent reply.
"Nn…yeah?" was all he could manage.
"Close your eyes. You might get lucky."
The sucker had fallen for it. Next thing he heard were quick, disappearing footsteps and then the unmistakable whoosh of a tight-packed snowball as it made a painful impact on his tush.
"Now we're even," Sakura called, starting to sprint away.
"You won't get away so easy!"
He caught her up. She skidded in the snow. "Woah." He caught her arm and steadied her. She looked so cute in his black earflap hat, hair spilling out from under it, thick-lashed green eyes wide in fake fright.
"Please don't snowdunk me, Naru-sama!"
"Now, Sakura-grasshopper, today I have introduced you to something I believe that you have not encountered since childhood. It's called … FUN. No, don't you pout at me! Embrace the FUN."
Sakura laughed in spite of herself, a big belly laugh that made half the park turn and stare at her. "Well, I haven't had any of that in a long time."
"Hey." He looked her in the eyes. "You may be Sakura Badass Haruno, Tsunade Mark II, with medical skills that makes JD from Scrubs look like an amateur, but I am Naruto Uzumaki, king of all things pertaining to and including fun. And I am going to make sure that you have some fun today."
Sakura looked up at him, a wicked gleam in her eye. "S'that so?"
Before Naruto could answer, she leaped at him and embraced him in a full-bodied, snowy hug.
Sai paused in the doorway and pointed at the mistletoe Ino had put up in a half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood. "What's that?"
"It's … um …" Sai noticed the red tint on her cheeks and thought about how pretty it would be to paint. She tried again. "See, here we have a tradition that …"
Sai stood up. "Tell me later. Don't move," he added, almost as an afterthought, as he opened a door and disappeared inside it.
Almost immediately, he came back, arms loaded with paints, brushes, and paper.
"Sit," he commanded, and, like an enchanted puppy, Ino did as she was told.
Hinata slid the French doors closed behind her and exhaled. She'd made it. Thank God.
"I saw what you did with that boy."
Hinata froze as a tiny, whiny little voice echoed through the hall. Oh God. Not now. Not now of all times. Please …
"Oh yes, I did … And kudos to you, sister." Hanabi Hyuga held a hand. "Gimme a high five."
Ino shifted in her chair, uncomfortable.
"Are you done?"
Sai put down his painbrush and smiled for the first time that evening.
"Chouji was right. You are impatient."
Ino was too tired to be interested. "Is it done," she muttered, pissily.
Sai jumped up with the kind of energy that only belonged to extremely fit people and took her hand. Once again, his shirt rode up, and interest sparked in Ino Yamanaka's mind – and hands, and lower regions – once more.
"So how much did you see, exactly?" Hinata asked her baby sister carefully, eyeing her lithe limbs and concave stomach. They were so different; chalk and cheese, loud and quiet, thin and not quite so thin. She shifted, comfortable now in an old shirt that used to belong to her mother.
"It was snowing pretty hard, so not much," Hanabi admitted, "but from what I could see, that guy had one sweet ass."
Hinata couldn't refrain from tutting. "You're such a pervert."
Hanabi laughed her throaty, dirty laugh, the kind of unnaturally experienced laugh a twelve-year-old develops by chain-smoking and too many late-night American police dramas.
"Not as perverted as that Aunty Sakari dude Dad introduced me too. Chin hair and all. She goosed me like three times." Hanabi made a face and Hinata laughed. They stayed in silence for the next few moments till Hanabi cleared her throat.
"So, you and that boy …"
"Kiba. His name's Kiba."
"Right. Kiba," Hanabi brattishly overemphasised his name. Then paused. "Did it hurt?" Twisting her hands and flicking her cigarette butt on the floor, she sounded much younger and more vulnerable than she had in a long time. Wistful, almost.
Hinata took a long drag on her cigarette and a slow sip of her whisky, feeling very experienced and suave. She started to formulate her answer in her head, savouring the words.
Ino whistled when she saw the picture. It was brilliant – Ino sitting restlessly in a chair at a very flattering angle, hair full-bodied and swished carelessly over one shoulder, while snowflakes fluttered down outside.
"Nice," she commented, deadpan. "I don't think you did justice to my boobs, though."
And so, the sexy-kunoichi-classy-flower-lady persona went tits up.
"Look, I'm sorry. I'm just too tired and bored to be polite."
A fleeting flash of white, even boy teeth made Ino's heart hammer in her chest. Fail or float?
"That's alright. You're in the house of a gentleman." Sai moved down the hallway again.
"So I've noticed. Anyone else would've hit on me by now." Too late to fix manners. Ino examined the picture again. Her eyes were exactly the same colour as the winter sky.
"Sai, it's great, but my eyes aren't really that light."
And suddenly he was in the room again.
"When you're looking at me, they are."
And just as suddenly, Ino realised that he was holding the sprig of mistletoe over their heads.
"You Konoha girls are funny. I'm not that naïve. And," he added, taking in the slim curves of her body, "you know what they say about girls in fishnet."
Ino twined her arms around his neck.
"Same as they say about martial artists."
Sai paused.
"I really hope you're better at kissing than you are at making jokes."
She was, and that was just the beginning.
"Spit it out," urged her Hanabi. She looked at the half-empty glass. "Not the vintage whisky, the sex."
Hinata unwound.
"It felt … nice," she told her sister dreamily.
Hanabi looked at her through half-open eyes. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Hinata felt, for the first time, incredibly close to her tiny pixie of a little sister. Another silence blossomed until The Honourable Lady Hanabi drawled, "So, you ever flirted with a bunch of sex-mad OAPs parading as aristocrats trying to kiss your dad's ass and get a piece of yours at the same time?"
Hinata paused, cigarette elegantly smouldering away in her hand. "…No."
Full of energy once again, Hanabi bounced to her feet. She looked her sister, clad in an oversize shirt, and plucked a black and white dress out of her wardrobe. She held it in front of her. "Welcome to my world, sis," she slurred, lighting another cigarette.
The dress itself was cut on the bias, daring, and short, and normally Hinata would've run down the stairs at the sight of it. Instead, she yanked the shirt over her head and slipped on the dress. It clung to her every curve like silicone. Hanabi looked her up and down.
"Sexy," she praised. "Now, ready to drive those over-sixties wild?"
Hinata, true to form, didn't say anything. Didn't need to. Just turned, smiled and beckoned her little sister after her.
The pink-haired girl in an elf hat and the blond boy dressed as Santa sat side-by-side drinking cocoa, in a seat by the window.
"Cocoa. In Starbucks. On Christmas Eve." Sakura took another sip of her cocoa. "We are truly sad."
Naruto blew into his cocoa, the steam turning the tips of his ears and his nose adorably red. "Really? I think it's kinda romantic."
Back came the black glare that he'd managed to keep at bay all day.
And back came that disarming grin. "Come on, Saki-chan, it's nearly Christmas. Stop being such a Scrooge."
So it was in the name of Christmas that Sakura finished her cocoa and held hands with him on the way back. Didn't snap at Naruto for staring at her a little too long when she took off her shirt. Only went back to the hospital for an hour.
But it was for an entirely different reason that Naruto awoke at 1 a.m. to Sakura stroking his hair and smiling. And the same reason why, at Christmas dinner with Sai, Ino, Chouji, Hinata and Kiba, Sakura staunchly denied it with her back turned and the same mysterious smile all over her considerably more happy-looking face. For the same reason that Sai insisted on feeding Ino her dinner, her excuse being that she was too tired to even pick up a fork, and carried her home. The same reason that Hinata beat Kiba 12-8 in footsie, and in air hockey after lunch.
Christmas. A time of hope.
New Year would bring the decisions.