I'm back!

Whoo!

Alrighty, I got some positive reviews so, I'm continuing on my Cousin!Love trek.

Just as a general warning; I won't be updating this fast again, I'm just doing this so that you have more than one chapter to look at, and because it always makes me twitchy when I see a story that's supposed to have more than one chapter but it only has that one. Sooo, I'm fixing that!

Expect new updates every TWO WEEKS!! If I'm not going to be available for the day when it's due to be updated then I will update it earlier.

Enjoy!


Anecdote

~-X-~

I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell this to my children, they just about throw up.
—Barbara Bush

~-X-~

"Okaasan?"

Hinata blinked and looked over to her right, starting to blush at being caught not paying any attention to her surroundings. Her youngest, and only, daughter looked back up at her with large white eyes. She smiled down at her and bent at the waist.

"Yes, Ama-chan?" She asked, using her 'mom voice' which only consisted of gentler tones and a love that was so big it hurt her chest. She didn't know what her daughter wanted, but it was probably just another of her seemingly endless questions; whether it was about why the sky was blue, or what a certain type of flower was. Sometimes she even asked what her name was.

"Okaasan, did Chichiue tell Okaasan that he loved her?" She asked, mispronouncing most of the words partially due to the fact that she was missing a few of her teeth and partially because she had her fingers in her mouth. Hinata smiled warmly and reached forward, gently pulling her fingers from her mouth with a placid scolding.

"Yes he did." Amaya's already adorably large eyes widened further.

"How?" She asked, in an awed voice.

Behind her inquisitive daughter, the three others that were along on the walk had stopped when the question was asked. The eldest one in attendance, Rai, was pretending that he didn't care with his hands in his large sleeves as he faked surveying a bulky flowering tree.

The additional two—Sachio and Kenji, who were playmates because they were so close to each other's age, stopped playing 'Ninja Rivals' and looked over with obvious and unbridled interest.

Hinata smiled at the reactions, knowing how much all children loved to hear stories about the past that may pertain to themselves or others that they know. Glancing at Rai, she knew that wasn't all the reason. To her children, their father was a respected and loved man surrounded by mystery, danger and awe. They knew next to nothing about him and the older of her sons felt slightly snubbed by that.

She knew that Neji didn't mean for that to happen; it was just how he was. He didn't talk much anyway, much less about his past. She knew that most of it was not a very cheerful time for him. This story, however, was a perfectly happy one, to say the least. She would oblige them the story and hope that Neji wouldn't mind.

She stood up straight again and walked over to the stone bench that was off to the side for weary garden-travelers, sitting with a thoughtful breath and a gesture for them to join her.

The younger ones did quickly, her daughter rushing up as fast as her cute little legs could take her in her yukata, and the two boys pushing each other out of the way to get there first. Amaya pulled herself onto the bench, with a little bit of help from Hinata, and the boys sat by her feet. She glanced over at Rai and smiled in question.

He blushed lightly at being caught listening and came over, but stood off to the side. Hinata cocked her head as she thought back to the day that he first confessed his feelings.

"Well…" She began, trying to find a way to make it less boring, but still factual for her younger and less attentive audience. Amaya wiggled around in anticipation and Hinata placed a calming hand on her brown hair and smoothed it down. "We were on a mission and we were very, very lost." She said, smiling at the memory.

~-X-~

"…Hinata-sama, I am most definitely not lost." Neji claimed resolutely, his Byakugan scanning the area for a familiar marking of some sort. His eyes roamed over to her and his eyebrow crinkled slightly in irritation. "And I would appreciate if you stopped saying that I was." He finished, reaching into his pack and drawing out his kunai, marking a tree with it before putting it right back where it came from.

Hinata cleared her throat and tucked her hair behind her ear daintily. Distantly, they could hear the rumble of a water fall—and Neji could no doubt see it—and the forest was so thick that only small beams of light filtered through the canopy in random spurts.

They had been separated from the rest of their group but she had no doubt that they would either find them or vice versa, because Akamaru knew her scent well and Lee was…youthful enough to keep looking for days, if needed.

She quickly looked at Neji and then away again.

And Neji refused to believe that they had been left behind.

It wasn't like she was sad or mad that she was alone with Neji, it was quite the opposite due to the feelings that she had developed for him.

It was just embarrassing that she couldn't look at him straight without being embarrassed about that. She didn't want him to get angry at her because he had actually been very, very nice to her lately and she loved it.

"Neji-san," She started nervously, inching closer to him. "I th-think we should put up a signal…" Neji grumbled incoherently and turned his head to look her full in the face.

"That would give away our position to others besides our teammates." He told her in a condescending voice. Hinata couldn't help herself; she flinched. Neji saw this and it seemed to irritate him far more than their current situation. He scowled and turned to continue scanning the surrounding foliage.

Hinata lagged behind and looked around in a paranoid fashion. She hated places like this. It was creepy and she had the strangest feeling that they were being watched

She shivered and looked behind her shoulder. She walked forwards and suddenly met light resistance. She turned to look in front of her and saw that she was nose -to-body with a spider and it web. She opened her mouth to eep, but no noise came out. The spider didn't move. Hinata didn't even dare to breathe.

Its leg twitched.

Hinata screamed and back peddled, flailing her arms in front of her. She vaguely remembered seeing Neji, faster than her eyes could follow, whipping out his weapon and leaping in her direction simultaneously.

She backed up and smacked into a tree, cracking her head back against it in her rush. Normally, this just would have been a cause for discomfort and perhaps a headache, but she hit her head on a raggedly broken limb and she hit on the softer part down towards her neck.

She swayed a bit and then slipped down onto her rear end, blinking against the spots.

"Hinata-sama?" Neji asked. She blinked harder and looked up in the direction of the voice. A large blotch covered his face and half of his neck. She giggled, inexplicitly. She followed him as he knelt down in front of her. "Hinata-sama, are you alright?"

She reached her hand back to feel her head where she hit it, because it was really starting to throb now and she wanted to check the damage. She drew her fingers back in front of her spotty eyes and squinted at them. She heard Neji inhale sharply and she realized that she had blood on her fingers.

"Hinata." He said, dropping her title and adopting a very serious and intense voice. She felt herself begin to hyperventilate as she saw the blood and began to grasp that she actually felt rather faint…

"Hinata." He hissed, grabbing her face in both his hands and holding her up. She sighed and opened her eyes. His Byakugan was still activated, but she didn't think that he noticed anymore. Which was weird because, if she had it on for a long time like that, then she usually started to become nauseas.

Behind him, she saw movement and stared at it, wondering if it was their friends. At the same time, Neji stiffened, placed her back against the tree, turned around, and had his kunai drawn all in one swift motion. He took up a protective stance in front of her and demanded that the people come out.

Hinata began to squirm in worry because she knew that thatwasn't the voice that he used for friends and her subconscious instincts were taking the cues from the big scary man that he was nervous and so she should be, too. Neji placed a hand on her stomach and she ceased moving immediately.

Her mind was beginning to clear enough to remember that she had a kunai, too, as well as a few throwing stars in her pack. Her hand inched back towards them. She almost had them, too, and then the man stepped out.

She didn't know who he was and she still doesn't know today; all she knew was that he was dangerous and that he could do some serious damage when given the opportunity.

"Neji…" She whispered. The hand on her stomach tensed, then withdrew. She stayed unmoving as he rolled forward into a position that enabled him to easily vault himself towards the man if needed.

"Homura, I assume?" He said, in a calm, almost snide, voice. The man tilted his head back proudly.

"You know me? Then you must be the ninja after me." He asked smugly. She couldn't see Neji's expression, but it must have been even more patronizing than his voice because smug became frustrated.

"Hardly. We don't have the time to waste on you. Local Law Enforcement is who you should worry about." Neji answered, his hand tightening on the kunai's hilt in anticipation for the man's angry rush toward him. Instead, though, he got an angry flushing and a sudden flurry of hand movements that Hinata knew as hand signs. She began to try to move.

"I'll give you something to trouble you, then." He mumbled, irritably. She watched as he went to make the last hand signal and Neji launched at him, going to incapacitate him before he could finish. He would have made it, to, but he had waited too long, perhaps thinking that the man wasn't good enough to be able to do a jutsu.

Whatever it was, the hesitation that he had made had cost him valuable time and the man cast a jutsu on him. Neji froze, dropped his kunai, and fell to his knees, obviously in a genjutsu. The man blinked in shock and then laughed triumphantly and kicked Neji on the shoulder, knocking his limp body over onto its side.

"I didn't think that would work." He confessed to himself. Hinata made a distressed mewling noise as she tried to make her legs move and bring her hands up to release the genjutsu. The man stiffened and Homura looked at her, evidently having forgotten about her until her noise. He grinned at her. "Did I make you mad?" He asked in a voice that people usually reserve for babies or small animals.

Hinata looked up at him and scowled, gritting her teeth and lugging herself shakily to her feet. She knew that she didn't exactly look intimidating with her legs shaky and leaning against the tree for support, but she wanted to be standing. The man laughed at her and began his slow advance towards her.

"Are you mad that I hurt your boyfriend?" He crooned, making kissy faces and noises. Hinata smiled humorously, mostly just baring her teeth as Neji began to twitch behind the man.

She leaned her back against the tree and brought her arms out and then clapped them together, audibly, and forming the release sign. The man stopped, not knowing what the sign meant. She focused on Neji and drew in a deep breath. "Hey… Hey, stop!" The man said and began to advance quicker than before, intent upon stopping her.

"Release!" Hinata cried as she expelled the breath. She knew that it worked when Neji's limp, but twitching body, became stiff and the twitching stopped. Hinata smiled proudly and willed him to get up, swiftly.

The man reached her, still not aware of what she had done, and smacked her hard. She fell over sideways and lay on the ground while her already throbbing head began to pound in time with her adrenaline charged heart.

"What'd ya try to do to me, you little bitch?" He growled at her. Then he…well, he gurgled. She looked up at him and saw that Neji had him by the throat. He was standing between the man and Hinata and he had lifted Homura off of his feet. Homura looked about ready to piss his pants.

"You shouldn't play little ninja games with the big ninja men if you can't keep up." Neji hissed at him and squeezed so hard the man's eyes bugged. Hinata sat up and made a small noise at the pain in her cranium, touching her cheek where she was positive that there would be a bruise.

"Neji…" She said, placing a hand on the back of his calf. He looked back at her. She winced at the pain in her head and gently said; "Let him go."

Neji, of course, looked like that was the very last thing that he wanted to do, but he nodded and set the man down, keeping the tight grip on his throat so that he could pull him close to his face and growl at him.

"You will never come near her again."

It was not a suggestion, and the man knew it. Even though he was oxygen starved and his eyes were starting to roll back, he still had the presence of mind to nod his understanding. Neji threw him back.

"Leave." He spat at the man, who scrambled to his feet and ran off unsteadily. Then Neji turned towards Hinata and bent down to her level, his Byakugan shrinking away as he looked at her. "Are you all right?" He asked. Hinata started to nod her head and stopped when she realized that it hurt a lot to do that.

"I should ask you that; he had you in the genjutsu." She responded weakly. He shrugged and continued to check her over.

"They're all the same after a while." He answered simply. He looked into her face and his eyebrows drew together as he reached up and gently fingered her cheek. She flinched and gasped at the pain. His worried expression became angry. "He hit you." He stated. Hinata glanced off to the side and used her hand to hide the mark.

"Yes." She said. Neji let out a breath of air too forcefully to call it a sigh.

"You should have let me kill him." He stated. Hinata closed her eyes.

"He didn't deserve it." She retorted, squinting against the pain in her head. Neji tenderly pushed her bangs out of her face.

"He did." He said gently. There must have been something in his tone because Hinata opened her eyes and looked at him. They just sort of look at each other for a few moments and then the hand that he had on her forehead, sifted through her hair to the back of her head where he pulled her against him in a tight hug.

"N-Neji?" She said, blushing horribly and wincing as her head throbbed at the sudden rush of blood.

"I love you." He half whispered, half mumbled into her hair. It was right then and there that Hinata fainted.

~-X-~

"…And when I woke up, I was in the hospital and he was on a different mission." She finished, watching her children's expressions. Amaya looked very happy and had migrated onto Hinata's lap, somehow. Rai looked far happier about the fact that his father was such an able fighter.

Sachio and Kenji were already reenacting the fight between Neji and Homura.

"But, why didn't Chichiue wait for you to wake up?" Amaya asked again, her wide eyes innocent. Hinata licked her lips. Why? Because they were both embarrassed about it for weeks, way too embarrassed for face-to-face conversation.

"Amaya."

All of their heads turned in the direction of the rich baritone of the main character of the story as he emerged from the shadows. Rai straightened up his posture and Kenji ran up to him happily, grabbing onto one leg. Sachio did much the same thing except that he bowed before latching onto the other leg.

"Welcome home, Neji." Hinata greeted. Neji nodded.

"I'm home." He responded. Amaya squirmed and got down on the ground.

"Chichiue!" She squealed, stumbling towards him. Hinata stood up and helped her up when she fell. Neji's eyes landed on her and he cocked an eyebrow.

"Have you been bothering your Okaasan?" He questioned rhetorically. Amaya looked at her feet and then off to the side when a butterfly caught her interest and she was off chasing it. Hinata watched her warmly. "Was she?"

Hinata looked over at Neji and watched as he nodded at Rai before again turning his attention on his wife. She tucked her hair behind her ear.

"Of course not." She said, gently coming up to him and placing a chaste kiss on his lips in greeting. "She just asked for a story."


Was it cheesy? Yes.

Did I enjoy writing that way too much? Of course!!

Tell me if you found any errors, and all that spiel!

Review!!