Naruto © Masashi Kishimoto

Summary: A love story seems impossible for handsome King Dork-a-lots Neji and lovely Denial Queen Tenten.

Chapter 6: The Royals

Despite the late hour, Tenten didn't find the playground scary at all. Just a tiny bit lonely.

Tenten swung herself lightly on the swing and sighed. Staring up at the stars twinkling merrily, she felt that they were mocking her.

Her boyfriend just broke up with her. There wasn't the surge of anger and fury she thought that would consume her, no. Instead, she just felt empty, like a void suddenly appeared in her chest. Numb, she felt numb.

He wasn't even all that great Tenten thought to herself, and it was true. He wasn't anything special. Their relationship only lasted a laughable two months. She's not even in love with him for goodness' sake.

"It's not working out, I think we should break up," he said, staring hard at the ground instead of at her.

"Oh," she managed, tone flat. "Okay," without another word, she turned around and walked away.

There, simple as that. No tears, no screams, nothing at all. Just an "Okay." Because surprisingly, it was; she was okay with it. That did not explain the empty feeling in her chest though.

After two months of a not-so-bad relationship, she was single again. 'What's new,' she thought but instantly shook her head.

"I'm being stupid," she muttered aloud and sighed. "No use moping about it." Because she's not the type to dwell on such things and honestly, it's not really worth it.

Without further ado, she resolved to leave every thought about her now ex-boyfriend at the playground and trudge her way back home.

oOo

It seems like her friends had other ideas however.

A week later, they were still coddling over her like she was this pathetic miserable puppy looking for shelter.

"Oh Tenten dear, when I see that bastard's face I swear I'll wring he's little neck. Just for you," cooed Ino at lunch, eight days after the breakup.

I-ino!" Hinata managed to gasp out, aghast.

"Oh don't 'Ino!' me, that asshole freaking deserves it," the blonde snapped, vein throbbing.

Hinata looked like she wanted to scold the blonde for her coarse language but wisely kept her mouth shut when Ino looked as if steam would come out of her ears anytime now.

"Damn right he does!" Exclaimed Sakura while simultaneously slamming a fist at their table.

Nearby patrons of the crowded cafeteria looked at them oddly but the girls did not notice. After a while, their unwanted audience just ignored them. Ino Yamanaka and Sakura Haruno are known for being hot headed (and loud) after all.

"Just say the word Tenten," Sakura started, eyes already blazing, "Just say the word and I will wipe the floor with that son of a bitch."

Hinata paled at their colorful language. Tenten on her part was content with munching on her bento.

"I-isn't that a bit too much?"

"NO!" Exclaimed the two hot heads at the same time, making Hinata shrink all the more inside her large jacket.

Grudgingly, Tenten placed her chopsticks down, she really should intervene. She can't have the two terrorizing poor Hinata with their death threats.

"Thanks for the support guys, but I don't really give a shit about him at all." Tenten shrugged and returned to her scrumptious bento.

"Well it should!" Ino snapped, glaring at her.

"Tenten! It's barely been a week since your break up and already he's sucking face with a skank." Sakura said, glancing distastefully at a couple not far from them eating each other's faces.

"Ew, don't make me look," was all she said, before stuffing herself with a whole mouthful of dumplings.

"But Tenten," whined Ino, "Doesn't it bother you?"

"The insensitive jackass is doing it in plain sight without regards that he just broke up with you!" Sakura's voice rose an octave higher.

"Should it? Bother me that is."

The two were gobsmacked. Hinata began fidgeting with her fingers.

"Look," she said sharply, "He's a pig and there's nothing I can do about it. And all of you should believe me when I say that I don't really give a rat's ass about him and whatever he does." Afterwards she stood up and left the cafeteria.

"She forgot her bento," murmured Hinata, glancing at the half-finished food container.

oOo

'Shit, I forgot my bento. Mom's gonna kill me.' Tenten suddenly remembered when she opened the door to her Physiology and Anatomy class, fifteen minutes early. Other than the various preserved mammals, amphibians and reptiles in formaline filled jars and Sakamoto the human skeleton, the lab was otherwise deserted.

Gingerly, Tenten walked towards one of the long tables near the window and took her seat. She fished her phone out of her pockets and quickly sent a message to her friends, asking if it would be alright to have one them keep her bento for a while and she'll just probably get it after school.

Tapping the 'Send' button, Tenten relaxed on her stool (or as relaxed as you can get while sitting on a tall, rickety, three-legged chair) and opted to idly scroll through her news feed for anything remotely interesting.

After a few minutes, she vaguely heard the door open but it was drowned out by the disgust she felt when her phone displayed 'Kiba Inuzuka is in a relationship with Ami Suriyama.' She began to ponder just what the hell she saw in that guy when right now he was dating someone as easy as Ami Suriyama.

"Ugh, what a pig." She found herself uttering out loud.

"Excuse me?" A baritone said from beside her.

She looked up to see pale lavender eyes and a smirk. Tenten's mouth quirked up a bit.

She offered him a smile, "Hey Neji."

He nodded to her in return.

"So who did what now?" He asked lightly, a small smile on his lips.

Tenten felt herself chuckling. She placed her phone back on her pocket now that she had her lab partner for company.

"The usual it seems," she started. "My friends are bugging me about Kiba."

"Ah," he said whilst preparing already for the class despite it being still a good ten minutes away. "What's their problem with you again?"

Tenten sighed and recalled the events of her lunch period.

"Why aren't you bothered?" He asked in his low baritone, his focus now entirely at her. She doesn't seem to mind.

"I dunno," she started, thinking about it. "Maybe 'cause I never had feelings for him in the first place. We weren't even that serious."

"Why even date him then?"

"Well," Tenten hesitated. Why did she go out with him in the first place? "Dunno. I thought he was cool, I guess." Even after she said it, there was no conviction in her words.

Neji gave her a pointed look to which she bumped him with her shoulder and chuckled when he fake nursed his arm. They were now shoulder to shoulder, their elbows on the table.

"I guess...I guess I thought I need company that's not filled with estrogen. Don't laugh," Tenten glared when she saw his lips quirk. He settled for a smirk instead. A smile was also threatening to form on her lips too but she held it at bay.

"Never thought you were such a girl," he said, smirk still in place. She punched him on the shoulder not so gently and the way he nursed his arm looked more genuine now.

"Shut up, do you want to hear it or not?"

Neji surrendered his hands up, face blank and gave her the go.

Tenten rolled her eyes at him but continued anyways. "I don't really have a prominent male figure in my life, y'know? I never met my dad and I don't have close friends of the male kind." She looked at him from the corner of her eye, cautious. He doesn't seem to be appalled yet. "It's always just me and my mom at home and then here at school it's the girls."

Tenten nervously chewed on her lip for a moment. She was letting her vulnerabilities show. Looking down on her clasped hands she continued quietly, "I guess I thought having a boyfriend would fill the gap."

She shook her head, dispersing the gloom in her head. "Anyways, I think I've had enough male company to last till the end of high school."

"I am seriously considering, whether or not, you believe me as a transvestite because it looks like you don't see me as male," he said, a sardonic look on his face.

Tenten laughed a little behind her hand and looked at him sideways. "Oh come on Neji, you don't count."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Last time I checked, I'm a hundred percent male."

"I mean," Tenten glared at him jokingly and gave him a smile, "We barely hangout when not in class and we're not exactly close, y'know."

Said aloud, Tenten found truth to her words. It wasn't that there was anything preventing them from hanging out outside the classroom setting, it was just a matter of convenience. He has his own group of friends, she has hers. It hasn't come up that they should go out of their way to set a time and place to just hang out.

Neji seemed to think otherwise, "Yet here you are talking about your woes to some supposed stranger."

"Strangers is stretching it," she replied.

"You wound me still, dear. Does our being lab partners since Biology I not count at all?" He asked, looking at her completely, expectant.

They were locked in a staredown and Tenten was first to look away.

"Point taken," she grumbled under her breath.

Neji smirked at her, "And as for not hanging out after class, I believe that will change soon."

She tilted her head at him and raised an eyebrow. "How so?"

Noticing their teacher and the others filing inside the classroom, Tenten started to prepare for class, retrieving her notebooks and pens as well as her lab coat.

Neji answered in the process of putting his own lab coat over his uniform, "Uchiha said that there'll be a partner project in P&A. Sensei will be handing out preserved frogs and we're to identify muscles with their I-O-A* by pinning them down and numbering it."

Tenten stared at him dumbly, "So basically we're given a frog for a pin cushion."

"Basically. Seems easy enough for you."

"Ugh."

Surprisingly, they hung out a lot after that.

The frog pin cushion thing was disastrous by the way, they had many trial and errors with pointing the different musculature. It was bad enough that Tenten was almost tempted to catch a new toad to replace their battered one. Thankfully, with Neji's genius and Tenten's skilled hands, they managed a 1.75, which was a good low 90 when compared with the transmutation table and that's good enough for her (Not so much for him, regardless, Tenten was happy).

After that they were playing tennis on Sunday mornings. It was almost coincidence when Tenten found out about his fondness for the sport.

They were at his room, it was their second attempt at tracing the frog muscles' origins and labelling them correctly this time, when Tenten saw weirdly-shaped bag sticking out of one of his closets.

Curious, Tenten padded to where the case lay sandwiched by the door. It was a tennis racket.

"You play tennis?" She asked suddenly, clearly taken aback.

Without even lifting his nose from the formaline-smelling frog, Neji answered "Yeah, I usually play with some of my cousins during weekends."

"Cool!" Tenten's eyes glittered, "I play too. Wanna have a go sometime? I would love to hit you with a tennis ball," she said cheekily as she made her way back towards him and the frog.

Neji almost snorted but stopped himself from creating the undignified noise, to which Tenten rolled her eyes at him.

Instead he answered, "I'd like to see you try but before that, you have a frog to pin."

Tenten sighed but soon enough, they scheduled the upcoming Sunday to play some rounds. (It became the ultimate game of her life. With her uncanny accuracy and his almost unbreakable defense, they were quite evenly matched. She would never in a million years admit to anyone that she was the one who lost though, she didn't forget his gloating face when they ate afterwards.)

But then, tennis became group studies, group studies were brought to the movies, and movies came to practically singing herself hoarse one time at the Karaoke bar.

All in all, for the past three months, Tenten felt nothing but bliss. Not even the sight of her ex-boyfriend sucking face with a different girl every other week could wipe the smile that was stitched on her face. All was fine with the world.

Unknown to her, her friends found it absolutely odd. They decided to corner her one night, in a cliche sleepover at Hinata's place. They were just waiting for the opportunity to pounce on their blissfully ignorant prey.

The opportunity had presented itself when they ran out of drinks and Tenten volunteered herself to getting their refreshments from the kitchen.

Unsurprisingly, she had bumped into Neji, who lived under his uncle's custody, on her way back to Hinata's room. It looked as if he was just about to enter his own room when she arrived at the top of the staircase.

"Hey," he said in greeting.

"Hey," Tenten replied in kind. When she saw him eye the cans of soda in her arms with a critical eye, she said simply, "We ran out of drinks."

"I could see that," he said, his nose wrinkled, "Haven't you girls heard of water? Maybe tea? Anything that's healthier than that."

Tenten rolled her eyes, "It's a sleepover Neji. No one likes boring drinks in a sleepover. If I had my way we'd have bottles of Corona here." She smiled at him cheekily as he glared at her.

"You don't even drink," he said.

Tenten shrugged her shoulders and stepped sideways around him to Hinata's room. "There's always a first time for everything."

"Preferably not in a place that would get me into trouble."

"We never told you to babysit us."

"No, but Uncle did and seeing as he owns the place, I think it would be wiser to follow his orders instead of yours," Neji smirked when Tenten, for lack of anything better to say, just blew him a raspberry as a retort.

"Try not to be too noisy," he smirked at her again and Tenten felt her cheeks heat up at the intense look he gave her.

"Good night," he said in a low voice, smirk softening to a tiny smile. He didn't wait for an answer though, and cooly, he entered his room - only to stub his toe at the door frame.

Neji cursed under his breath, making Tenten giggle at the sight of him wiggling his toe to ease the pain.

Still giggling, "Don't hurt yourself," she teased. She could faintly see a tinge of pink on his cheeks and her mirth had died down into a lopsided smile.

"You okay?" She asked, her cheeks hurting from smiling too wide but she couldn't force her facial muscles to relax when Hyuga Neji was trying to hide his embarrassment.

With a roll of his eyes, he tried to play it cool and shrugged but try as he might, the redness in his cheeks would not leave and Tenten couldn't help but giggle again.

Feeling, more than seeing, the glare directed at her, Tenten calmed down her laughter into mere chortles, "Okay, okay," she said, straining to keep the cans of soda in her arms and not on the ground.

Her lips quirk up into another of her grins as she looked at her usually serious lab partner, evading her eyes with a blush.

With a small giggle, she relieved him of his humiliation and said, "Goodnight Neji."

With a smile, she turned around and headed for Hinata's room. Before she could touch the handle though, she heard him whisper, "Sweet dreams," but when she aimed a look at him, his door was already shut with a click. Nonetheless, there was a warmth that settled on her stomach.

Tenten shook her head and entered Hinata's room. She was greeted by the predatory smiles of Ino and Sakura, as well as Hinata's overly glad one.

"So," Ino started, checking her nails and feigning nonchalance as Tenten made her way towards them, lowering the drinks on the floor and sitting herself near Hinata, completing their circle.

"Hm?" Tenten asked, ignorant of the look that was passed by the other three as she distributed the drinks.

"You know," Sakura led on, a cheshire smile blooming on her face. "What's going on between you and Neji-san?"

The gossip-hungry trio unconsciously leaned in anticipation.

"What do you mean?"

The three of them almost fell on their faces.

Tenten honestly has no idea what they were talking about at all.

Ino was the first to get over the shock. "She means, what is up with you and Neji-san?"

"Yeah and that makes much more sense by the way," she said, looking at them oddly.

"You know," Sakura tried again, a coy smile on her face.

"No. I don't."

"Oh for goodness' sake," Tenten was surprised to find that Hinata was the first one to break. "Are you dating my cousin or not?" She said, a fierce gleam in her eyes and almost crushing her cola with her white-knuckled grip.

To say that Tenten was flabbergasted would be an understatement. If she were drinking from her own can of cola, she would have sputtered it all out in surprise.

"M-me? And Neji?" It was clear that she was blown away by their assumptions. The thought of them together was never conceived, ever, in her mind. Neji was, and always had been, the dork she had for a lab partner (no matter what the rest of the teenage girl population would say otherwise). "Whatever made you think such a thing?"

The other three were gobsmacked once again.

"B-but for the past three months, y-you've been hanging out a lot!" Sakura sputtered.

"We thought you were dating!" Ino all but wailed. "You guys went to the Karaoke bar, alone, for Pete's sake!"

"That was one time and what're we gonna do in the K-bar anyways? Not sing?"

The louder two gaped like fish out of water and Hinata had deflated into her oversized silk shirt.

"So you're not dating?" The raven haired girl asked, a small frown and down cast eyes marred her face.

"No," Tenten said pointedly.

"Have you ever considered dating him, like, at all?" Ino tried again.

Thinking back to the three years they've been lab partners, she answered with a shake of her head, "No."

"Do you think he's hot? At least tell me you think Hyuga Neji is hot?" Sakura pressed, clutching a pillow in her vice-like grip as she waited with baited breath for Tenten's answer.

The girl in question however, bubbled up in laughter, crushing all hopes of her friends.

"H-hot? Neji?" Tenten laughed some more, the image of him just stubbing his toe and being red in the face mere moments ago tickled her stomach.

"But he's such a dork!" Tenten giggled again.

The trio slumped their shoulders and sighed in defeat.

oOo

A/N: So the second chapter turned too much of a cliche for me that it just looked like word vomit. Err. I don't think the second chapter is salvageable. But uh, here you go?

I-O-A meaning Insertion, Origin, and Action. I remember that frogs are usually the anatomy starter pack in high school? Lol no. I don't know. I just knew this from a Zoology course I took back in freshman college. Don't listen to my blabber.

Feedback is appreciated! And if you have any suggestions for this fic (or the prompt-like summary) then go ahead. I am honestly considering rehashing a different version and creating an entirely separate story but with the same concept (Given I have enough foundation for a sound plot). Thank you for reading!