Um. Blame dazynl8 for this. She turned me onto this pairing, so needless to say, this fic is a little dedication to her. Hope you like it dear, and I haven't done irreparable damage to this pairing.
Mine, immaculate dream, made breath and skin
I've been waiting for you
Cannot forgive from falling apart at the seams
Cannot believe you're taking my heart to pieces
Oh, it'll take a little time,
Might take a little crime
To come undone now
We'll try to stay blind
To the hope and fear outside
Hey child, stay wilder than the wind
And blow me into cry
Who do you need, who do you love
When you come undone?
Lost, in a snow filled sky,
we'll make it alright
To come undone now
Beautiful is such a drab concept to Neji. It's too fractured, ever-changing and there isn't a solid definition of the word. He can't handle those things; undefined things. Abstract concepts are completely lost on him because he is first and foremost logical. He is stark, he is black and white and prefers to pretend that gray areas don't exist, that they're for somebody else.
He lives his life by truths, and simple ones. A kunai to the throat will slice it. The sun will always rise. The scar on his head will always make him lesser than what he really is to the eyes of his family, despite his talents. Life is unfair, and it will always be unfair. Innocent people die, and guilty ones laugh at the ease of their escape.
It sickens him, then, that when he sees Hinata, he sees what he can only describe as beautiful. He sees loveliness and softness, but not the kind of softness that reminds him of his mother. Hinata's softness is like a worn boulder; smooth to the touch, but still something dangerous, if dislodged. She isn't exactly fire and ice, because there's no way for those to coexist. She is more like earth, like the promise of a good harvest to a farmer. With the right amount of sweat and maybe some blood, Hinata can bloom into anything, can be anything.
He's always been jealous of her that way. While he's stuck on a path that's set in stone, that he isn't sure he can call entirely his, Hinata is the hawk soaring above, the limits on her freedom the ones that she and only she has, and can, set. She's stronger than him, always, in that sense, and it's more than a little unnerving to think of her as a pillar of strength.
As his pillar of strength.
oooo
Her lips are blush wine and maybe a little like poison, Neji thinks. If he tastes them (and his throat is clenched and his fists balled, because he hates pretending he doesn't want to), he's sure he won't come out of the experience alive. She's deadly in her seduction, but it's so second-nature to her, he is sure, that possibly she doesn't realize she's doing it.
It's well after sunset, when he sees her near the pond. Her yukata is loose, billowing around her in the summer breeze. The moonlight casts its ethereal glow on her, outlining every crevice, each soft curve, of Hinata's naked body. He almost looks away; not because he wants to protect her modesty, because she's a kunoichi and modesty is a comfort they can never know, but because his heart may very well crash through his chest at this sight.
It's more than he can take, really, but he wants to embed this image of her - the very picture of womanhood, of need - into his mind. To cherish it, to always come back to it when he needs something whole and something worthwhile to keep him going.
She turns her face upward, to look at the stars, and he sees the pearly tears making tiny rivers down her face, the droplets clinging to her throat and trailing, trailing so slowly, down her breasts, coming to pool at her rosebud nipples. This is her ugliness, this is her weakness, and this is when he really should turn away, because Hinata wouldn't want anybody, least of all him, to see her like this. To see her struggle, to see her allowing her inner pain to take over. For a Hyuuga, any outward sign of emotion other than steel strength is a sin, is the surest way to guarantee the wrath of Hiashi. Hinata doing this, being this, is forbidden.
But her ugliness was his art. Calloused hands could never paint her perfection, but that doesn't stop him from trying. He'd rather take a Chidori to the throat than put down the brush.
oooo
Hinata is stained glass.
The color of blood, lit from within, ashen shoulders and midnight hair, pale eyes glowing.
Hinata is stained glass and her beauty is the light of her heart, and Neji hates her for it. Hates her because she's all but shattered his perception of the world, of reality, and he can no longer live within the confines of "yes" and "no", not when he moves when she does, when his intake of breath perfectly matches hers.
And this contradiction could, and probably would, very well be the death of him, because he lives for Hinata and all he can think when she's near is how he should be the one - the only one - to wipe any tears she dare cry from her eyes.
He'd hate to have to rip off any other man's arm who tried.
oooo
In winter, Hinata is in her element. She is picturesque against the snow, a white backdrop for lavender and blue, for pale pink when she comes up to him, breathless and with a smile on her face. She stands so close to him he can count the snowflakes caught in her eyelashes.
They stand like that, ice and wind swirling around them, silver eyes staring into silver eyes, for a time that isn't measured in minutes, but by pounding heartbeats and the incandescent brush of Hinata's hand against his. He is still, and she takes this as an invitation, and closes the gap between them. Neji's eyes slide close for a moment, and she is warmth, undiluted heat against him.
Hinata makes a sound between a sigh and a whimper, as though this is painful and soothing at the same time. He understands this, because he feels it too, feels it in his blood and between the walls of his lungs.
He is taller by at least six inches, and she tips her head upward, catching the corner of his mouth with hers. It's a small gesture, really, but it speaks volumes between the two of them and Neji knows that his life will never, that it can never, be the same again.
oooo
She is waiting by the pond, their pond, as he now comes to think of it. It's dusk, with the mounds of snow against the cobblestone paths and the water around them a thick sheet of blue ice.
"Every time I look at you, I feel so completely dismantled." She hasn't turned to see him, but she could pick him out amongst a crowd even if she was blind. His chakra is as her own, pumping through her body and sensing him is as second nature as breathing. "And underneath that is this...this feeling, this sense. As if...as if we, Neji, are two halves of a whole."
Neji moves silently to her, behind her. His hands ghost along her hips, the pads of his fingers digging into her skin as he holds onto her, because she is really his anchor, the eye of the storm and something eternally solid to reach for. "Your heartbeat, Hinata," and his tongue and lips caress her name, speak it with all the reverence and worship of a prayer, "is as my own."
Hinata closes her eyes and tips her head back against his chest, their hair blowing against one another's in the chill wind.
Neji still isn't entirely sure about beauty. It's confusing and exciting all at the same time to be here, to be this close to Hinata, to his cousin. He wonders if the most beautiful things aren't those understood or even the ones seen, but the ones felt and the ones desired.
And he will never desire anything, anyone, more than he does the girl pressed into him, the girl with velvet lips and a soul that, so much like his, is fractured like broken glass. But he can see, in the shards, the perfection (even if she's only perfect in his eyes) of her, the innate love that she exudes. The love she exudes for him.
For once in his life, Neji feels lucky to have been born to his position, to have been born himself. Because now he can see that all of this, all the main family and the branch family nonsense, has led him to her.
And in that aspect, life is nothing more than simply beautiful.
Song used is Come Undone by Duran Duran. As ever, feedback is greatly appreciated, especially as this is my very first NejiHina.