A/N: This is one of those stories that just kind of flew out, believe it or not. It NEEDED to be written, it seems.

LeeHina: Ice Skating

It wasn't that things came easily to Lee, or that he was in a habit of bragging about how skilled he had become. Hinata had just learned to accept that Lee was better at most things than she was. He was faster, could hit harder, and ultimately would win any round of sparring they ever tried. That was the way of it, and she had long ago accepted this.

So the fact that she, Hyuuga Hinata, was gracefully flying along the ice while her boyfriend, Rock Lee, sat on his butt looking confused about how he got there, surprised the kunoichi more than a little.

They were out on the frozen pond just behind the Hyuuga compound. It wasn't a particularly large pond, but it was big enough for the two of them to ice skate in small circles. Or, at least, that had been the idea. Instead, it had resulted mostly in Hinata enjoying her time soaring through the falling white powder, and Lee ending up clumsily dipping and diving for a collision with the very solid pond.

Biting back a giggle, the young Hyuuga heiress slid over to him and knelt down beside the dazed looking young man. "Did your feet get away from you?"

Lee blushed slightly, rubbing his head sheepishly as he laughed. "It would seem so. Never mind, though. I intended to get down here at some point anyway."

Eyes almost as white as the snow blinked in confusion as Lee turned to be kneeling in front of her.

"This would be easier for me if you were standing." It was Lee's sheepish, almost frightened, smile more than his words that Hinata nodded to as she pulled herself up onto unsteady legs.

Perhaps even stranger than being better than Lee at something was towering over him like this. In the years since their chuunin exam Lee had grown from a gangly young man she barely knew into the man, taller than even his sensei, that she loved.

"I was going to wait for Christmas," Lee was talking very quickly, like he did when he was excited or nervous about something. "But now that I have this, I do not think I can wait anymore. It is like carrying an extra weight in my pocket, but it is training I do not think my heart could take. Do you understand?"

Hinata nodded, though she really didn't. She'd learned that asking him to repeat himself rarely did any good. Mostly, she'd learned to trust that the details she didn't understand weren't as important as the underlying message in Lee's words. That was just the way he talked, and she liked it.

"I am getting ahead of myself." This was muttered more to himself than to her, and suddenly Lee seized her hands and pulled her towards him. She stumbled a little on her skates, but years of training kept her upright. "Hinata, you are my shining star. The thing I want most in the world is for you to be happy. To see your sincere smile every day, and know that I was part of it. What I want to know, with all my pounding youthful heart, is if you could be happy with me. Always."

An easy question, really. No one had ever made the young Hyuuga feel worth something the way that Lee did. Like just now, admitting how important her happiness was to him. For the first time in her life, somebody really cared about her, valued, respected, and loved her. Just as much, as deeply, as she did him. That was worth everything to Hinata, and she would have to be a fool to give that up.

She didn't even have to think about her answer. "Of course I would."

"Then, Hyuuga Hinata, could you find it in your sweet heart to…to…" Lee fumbled around in his jacket pocket, removing a small box, "to do me the honor of becoming Mrs. Rock Lee?"

For the first time that night, Hinata found herself on the ice as her knees gave out.