Title: Dog With a Bone
Disclaimer: I'm just BARELY old enough to have a good grip over my own hormones, don't give me too much credit.
Rating: PG-13 ( T ) – because all men are dogs (don't worry, fellas, I'm a dog person).
Spoilers: If you didn't know that Kiba and Hinata are teammates, then I suppose you didn't read too far into the series in first place. How silly of you.
Summary: OneShot. Some of the men in his family had been neutered for less. KibaHina.
Dude, I'm almost up to 40 fics already (this one makes 39)! That's pretty bitchin' considering at the start of the summer I didn't even have twenty...
Another last minute DateMe entry. This month it's KibaHina with a "Dog Days of Summer" theme.
Puberty always proves to be a trying time for Inuzuka males. Sure, every adolescent boy suffers from raging hormones, a cracking voice and a new version of bed wetting, but very few outside of the infamously wild canine clan of Konoha experience some of the more...unusual side effects of maturation passed down from Inuzuka father to pup. Things like heightened aggression, licking oneself in...unorthodox places and, possibly most embarrassing of all, an obsessive fixation with female hindquarters. That, and the propensity for an excessive amount of body hair in a handful of the male (and sometimes female) population of the compound (luckily, that particular indignity seemed to be borne of some kind of recessive gene and only affected about five percent of the clan overall).
Of course, over the generations the men of the Inuzuka clan learned to deal with these teenage shortcomings and accept them as a natural part of life. Besides, most of the symptoms were easy enough to hide and/or play off as relatively normal, so most individuals outside of the family were relatively unaware of any significant differences between them and their own children. Those that did know about the oddities of Inuzuka puberty simply accepted them as "one of those things" and pretended not to notice when one of the twelve-to-eighteen-year-olds dragged his butt across the living room rug.
Not that any of this was of any significant comfort to one Inuzuka Kiba, who had just endured the most humiliating experience of his young life. And there was no telling how Hinata felt about the whole thing...
The day of the...unpleasantness had started out innocently enough, as they usually do. Kiba had met up with Hinata at their usual training spot – out in the middle of the woods where they could practice their exceptional tracking and scouting skills without hindering or being hindered by many of their fellow ninja – and spent a good portion of the morning running about and practicing their jutsu. The only notable difference between this morning and every other was the absence of Shino, who had been called away on a mission the afternoon before and wasn't scheduled to return to Konoha for another three days. Other than that, all was same old, same old.
Until it was time to take a mid-afternoon break, anyway. That's when everything began to go wrong.
"It's so hot," Hinata had complained to herself, fanning her reddened cheeks with both hands.
"So take off your coat," Kiba, who had already discarded all articles of unnecessary clothing from his person hours beforehand, suggested. His bare shoulders were starting to feel tender and hot to the touch under the direct sunlight of the clearing in which they were resting, but it was all worth it to experience that occasional wandering breeze that randomly swooped down on them from the swaying treetops.
The heated flush in the Hyuuga heiress' face spread outwards until it reached her ears. "B-But – "
"I don't know how you can stand to wear that thing year-'round anyway," Kiba countered before she could even stutter out her argument. "You're going to die out here in all this heat if you leave it on."
Hinata lowered her eyes to the lavender and indigo windbreaker that adorned her slight frame, possibly considering her well-meaning friend's logic (or, perhaps, trying to invent a new excuse to keep it on over her modesty).
After nearly a full minute of staring at her front with a troubled expression stretched across her face, she finally relented with a slump of her shoulders. "O-Okay...I g-guess you're r-right."
As she raised her hand to take hold of the zipper (which was dangling right beneath her chin, just about), the adolescent dog-boy turned away from her in search of refreshment. The wind had died down nearly ten minutes ago and didn't seem interested in coming back anytime soon, so it was up to him to lower his body temperature now.
Pouring the remnants of his half-empty canteen over his head, Kiba reveled in the cooling effect of the lukewarm water on his overheated anatomy. As some sort of happy bonus, each little descending river created from the heavy downpour tickled the little crevices of his chest and abdomen, causing his hardened muscles to flex slightly in rhythm with the flow. The liquid pooled somewhere out of sight beyond the waistband of his shorts and, beyond that point, lost its mildly chilled quality and mingled indistinguishably with the sweat from his morning workout.
Almost by reflex, Kiba began to shake the revitalizing droplets away after only a few long moment's pause. It flew away from his hair and torso on a willy-nilly trajectory, showering 360 degrees of his surroundings with the excess moisture.
Ahh...that felt nice.
"Eee! K-Kiba-kun!"
Upon hearing Hinata's squeal, the Inuzuka teen immediately halted the rapid motion of his gyrating body and adopted his most sheepish expression. Turning back in his teammate's direction, he began apologizing profusely. "Geeze, Hinata, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to – "
The remainder of his regretful statement fell away as his jaw thudded against the forest floor. Hinata – his long-time friend and training partner – was squatting on the grass beside him, sans jacket for what was probably the first time ever in his presence, and looking far more...mature than he'd ever pictured her (the fact that he had been imagining her in lesser states of dress before this date being completely beside the point, naturally). To make matters more awkward, the loose white tank top that she'd apparently been wearing underneath her baggy layers clung to her almost-whiter skin, soaked as it was across the front by the spray that had descended upon her during Kiba's shake down.
What Kiba had said about Hinata being hot was proving true in more ways than he had initially fathomed. She looked as delectable as a t-bone with shreds of meat still clinging to the sides...
"It's o-okay, Kiba-kun," she assured him with a sweet smile that sent a shiver of longing up his spine. "I'll dry. M-May I borrow your towel?"
Unable to force his heavy tongue to form words (hell, he couldn't even seem to withdraw it back into his mouth), he simply nodded at her and pointed to his bag with a trembling hand.
Climbing to her feet, she bowed deeply to him (which only exacerbated his shameful condition) and quietly said, "Thank you, Kiba-kun" before proceeding directly to the hiking backpack he toted around with him almost everywhere.
He'd been able to hold himself back when she'd bowed to him, when she'd walked away from him with a sway in her hips and even when she'd lifted the hem of her shirt to wring some of the water out of it, but when Hinata bent down to rummage through his belongings for the desired piece of terrycloth, Kiba just hadn't been able to take it anymore. He'd jumped on her.
Thinking back on the entire fiasco was painful for the Inuzuka teen, but it was one of those memories that absolutely refused to go away, even in the middle of the night when the all the other members of his household were chasing rabbits in their dreams. There was just no way to assuage the guilt he felt over tackling her and...and humping her leg like that...oh, geeze, it was even worse in hindsight! Some of the men in his family had been neutered for less.
She'd never speak to him again, he was sure of it. He didn't blame her a bit, either, considering how he and his uncontrollable hormones had nearly violated her. The only bright side to the whole fiasco was that he'd been able to stop himself before actually –
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine..."
The tinkling notes of his specially assigned ringtone startled him so badly that he rolled out of his bed, legs tangled up in his Underdog sheets. Akamaru raised his head a little to check on his master and, apparently finding him satisfactorily uninjured, put it back down and closed his eyes.
"...when you're not happy, my skies are gray..."
As quickly and gracefully as he could, Kiba freed his feet from the knotted linens and clawed his way back onto his mattress. In his haste, however, he sunk his sharpened nails into the bottom sheet and mattress pad and, as he was raising himself up, tore them both from the bed. He went sprawling backwards with them and fell to the hardwood floor with a painful thump.
"...you'll never know, dear, how much I love you..."
After finally righting himself, he flung himself onto his bed and reached out for the glowing cell phone that was reaching the end of its song.
"...please don't take my sunshine aw – "
"Hinata!" he gasped into the receiver, flipping it open just in time.
"I-I'm sorry, Kiba-kun. D-Did I wake you...?"
"No, I was...uh...," Kiba thought for a few extended seconds about what to say, but drew nothing but a blank. "Are you okay?"
"Oh...yes...I just can't sl-sleep, is all."
"Oh...okay..."
There was a long stretch of silence on the line during which Kiba fidgeted restlessly on his bare mattress.
"I didn't think – "
"I j-just wanted to – "
After the simultaneous statements cut each other off, there was another significant span of time without any words between them, but it was shorter this time.
"Y-You go first, Kiba-kun."
"No, it's fine. What did you want to say?"
"Really, I'd l-like to hear what y-you have to say."
"Um...," now that he had the floor, he'd forgotten what he wanted to tell her. Well, apologizing again was always a good way to start. "I'm...I'm really sorry about...y'know..."
"It-It's okay, really. I'm not mad."
Kiba hardly dared to believe his ears. "Y-You're not?"
"No...I've heard that Inuzuka boys can be a little...um...different sometimes."
Oh, good. It seemed like their reputation preceded them. "I'm supposed to grow out of it...I think. I'm pretty sure I am, anyway. I can change."
"I th-think you're fine just the w-way you are."
"You mean except for...?"
"Oh, well, yes. Except for th-that..."
"Sorry again..."
"I-It's okay..."
Though the dead air between them was still flavored with awkwardness, it had become a different sort. Less guilty and more...something. Kiba couldn't quite name what it was, even though he felt he somehow knew it.
"W-Will I see you tomorrow?"
"You want to?"
"If y-you do..."
"Of course! Same time, same place?"
Hinata paused for a few seconds before replying, "Um..I w-was thinking maybe the training grounds near the sch-school this time."
"Oh, yeah...good idea."
"See you at seven...?"
"See you at seven."
"Good night..."
"'Night..."
— — —
Author's Note: I'm not so sure I like the second part, but I couldn't just leave it with Kiba misrepresented as a budding sex offender n.n; Besides, it was fun writing about him falling off his bed over and over again, hehe.
Anyway, there are a lot of doggie references in this story, so keep an eye out for them! I stuck 'em everywhere I possibly could. And, yes, the title pun is exactly what you think it is, hehe.
. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) .