Title: May Flowers
Disclaimer: (sneeze)kissmycopyrightedarse(sneeze) Stupid allergies...
Rating: G ( K ) – How (figuratively) dirty could I possibly make a LeeHina? (I'm open to suggestions.)
Spoilers: It's an AU, so I'm pretty sure nothing's given away.
Summary: Sequel to "April Showers." OneShot, AU. This time, Hinata didn't resist, merely stumbled along in Lee's flamboyant wake, her own smile widening to nearly painful proportions. Mild LeeHina.
Hina, Hina, how does your garden grow...? (Anyone who knows my given name will probably find this mildly funny.)
May contest entry #2 for DateMe.
The hallway appeared to be empty. No students bustling about or loitering at their lockers, no teachers chiding them for running recklessly past their open classroom doors, not even a janitor poking his nose around for random scraps of trash. No activity whatsoever.
Perfect. Her chance had finally come!
Taking one last peek to the right, another to the left, just as she might do when navigating traffic, Hinata tentatively took her first step away from the relative safety of the library doorway and into the unknown. Without too much hesitation, she took another.
Once fully out into the corridor, Hinata breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
"Ah ha! So this is where you've been hiding, Hinata-chan!"
"Eek!" she squealed involuntarily, both hands instantly rising to cup over her mouth and paling cheeks. Simultaneously, she spun her body a full three hundred and sixty degrees around to face –
Rock Lee.
Embarrassed both over her false alarm and the bemused expression on her upperclassman's face, Hinata immediately (and consciously) turned beet red. "L-Lee-senpai! You st-startled me!"
"Are you feeling alright, Hinata-chan?" Lee queried, emerging fully from behind the corner he was half-hidden behind. His normally glimmering grin was put a way for the moment as he looked her up and down for any obvious signs of illness or trauma (her recent fright aside, of course).
"I'm f-fine," she replied, shrinking away from the older student's helpful gaze and extended hand. "Just a little j-jumpy, I guess."
As unconscious of personal boundaries as ever, Lee pressed his open palm to her forehead. Sliding it down her face to feel her brightly-glowing cheek, he commented, "I didn't know you could feel hot and clammy at the same time! Did you catch a spring fever, Hinata-chan?"
Unsure of whether or not it would be polite to back away, Hinata stayed put beneath her cousin's classmate's touch as she gathered up the nerve to reply. With her eyes downcast shamefully, she eventually replied, "I d-don't think so..."
"Allergies?"
"No."
"Mumps? Measles? Meningitis?"
"N-No...," she responded, feeling slightly queasy at his proximity, if not because she suffered from one of his diagnoses. Aside from the...incident of the previous month, Hinata was fairly certain that she'd never been so close to a boy before (except for Neji-nii-san, but he didn't really count since he was family, right?).
To her dismay, Lee chose to continue their dialogue from a closer vantage point. Pressing his forehead gently against hers, he looked her directly in the eyes as he said, "Good! Then you should get out and enjoy the spring of your youth! Come on!"
Without any further ado and absolutely no heed to Hinata's sputtering protests, Lee then proceeded to drag Hinata down the hall by the wrist, seemingly oblivious to the resistance caused by the heels of his captive's shoes as they skidded across the tiled floor. Hinata did her best to dig in, but the slick linoleum against the soles of her new loafers did little to slow the pace that Lee set. "W-Wait! Lee-senpai, slow down!"
"We're planting pansies today, Hinata-chan," the elder student said to the younger, turning his head to flash her a brilliantly glittering grin. In the harsh fluorescent light of the corridor, Hinata had to squint at the luminescence reflected from his perfectly white choppers. Randomly, the Hyuuga heiress wondered if Lee's teeth glowed in the presence of a blacklight. "I saved some of the orange ones for you, but we'd better hurry!"
"Lee-senpai – "
"I've been taking care of your flowers since you've been gone, Hinata-chan. I treat them as if they're my own!"
"Please, Lee-senpai, listen to – "
"Your tulips are beginning to sprout, by the way. In another couple of weeks, they should have petals and ever – "
"LEE-SENPAI!"
As if her futile struggles had suddenly and inexplicably proved useful, both teens stopped dead in the middle of the hallway. With her wrist still grasped loosely in his hand, Lee turned to stare at Hinata, his grin all but dissolved from his face. "Something wrong, Hinata-chan?" he queried, hitching up the corners of his lips as if attempting to turn the wattage back on.
"Lee-senpai, I...," Hinata began, feeling the flush bloom on her cheeks once again as her innately shy nature balked at the prospect of being the center of attention. Thankfully, Lee was the entirety of her audience, holding her embarrassment at being singled out to a bearable minimum. "I - I'm not going to club!" There, she'd said it.
Without prompting, Lee slowly withdrew his hand from her arm, allowing it to fall to his side limply. His head was lowered, the last sparks of enthusiasm dying out in the depths of his eyes, and his eyebrows were slack in defeat. Hinata had never seen her club president like this before. "So you're dropping out of the club, too, Hinata-chan? I was hoping that you, at least..." his words trailed off into a heavy sigh.
"'Too'?" Hinata repeated, blinking at Lee in bewildered concern. "H-Have club members stopped coming?"
"Yeah," he confirmed, a hint of bitterness flavoring his smile now. "It's just me, Ino-chan and Shino-kun now. When I saw you coming out of the library earlier, I thought that maybe you were coming back. I guess I got a little excited, huh?" he finished, lifting his eyes to fix on Hinata's face, possibly to see if she was sharing in the little joke at his expense.
She wasn't. The news about the Konoha Gardening Club, which was usually so high in attendance, disturbed her. More upsetting than that, though, was the effect the increase in absences was having on Lee; it wasn't like him to seem so...pessimistic.
"What about Sasuke-san?" Hinata couldn't help but ask. When Lee's eyebrows rose in response to this question, she felt the blush in her cheeks intensify. "A-And the others?"
"Sasuke-kun hasn't been to a meeting since last month," Lee reported, hints of his bitter smile back on his face. "He stopped showing up only a couple of weeks after you did. The girls – all of them except Ino-chan, of course – went away with him. All twelve of them."
It was Hinata's turn to lower her head. "Oh.." Though she couldn't say she was sorry to hear that Sasuke, the gloomy witness to her nudity from the month before, was no longer around, she still felt incredibly sorry for Lee and the club. Horticulture was something that the president was passionate about and he loved to share it with everyone around him. Even Lee's excitement over flowers, it seemed, dwindled when faced with such apathy...
Scarcely aware of what she was doing, Hinata reached out and took her upperclassman timidly by the hand. Without raising her eyes to his, she offered him a quiet yet heartfelt apology. "I'm sorry, Lee-senpai...I was being s-selfish and not thinking of the club. Can...can we still go today? Or has everyone gone home already?"
When Lee didn't immediately answer, Hinata chanced a tentative glance at his face. If the pearly-white radiance of his smile was any indication, he was back to his usual optimistic self already. The tight squeeze of her hand within his further implied that his fervor had returned to him.
"Let's go!" he declared a second later, taking off in the direction in which he'd been pulling her earlier. This time, Hinata didn't resist, merely stumbled along in Lee's flamboyant wake, her own smile widening to nearly painful proportions.
— — —
Author's Notes: Uh...I really have NO idea how to go about characterizing Lee aside from an oddball hopped up on crack, but I couldn't use that for this story. Thus, I went for a slightly calmer version and did my best to include a few enthusiastic quirks. I'm pretty sure I botched it...alas. n.n;
I think I'll continue this series into June, as well. That sounds like a nice cop-out – er, plan n.n;
Un-beta'd.
. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) .