Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto

Author's Note: Yay! One more update!

Chapter 9: Exploiting Neighbors

Time stretches. That was evident when the moments passed torturingly slow as Sasuke stood there blushing from embarrassment, staring into her eyes, attempting at least because…

He audibly swallowed. Hinata, distracted by the movement of his Adam's apple, involuntary looked down. The idea of starring into her eyes really didn't work her eyes were mostly focused bellow his face.

'She looked there the third time in the last minute.' Sasuke noticed with a tinge of pride despite the circumstances.


'It's personalities that count, 'Hinata had to remind herself, 'not sexy, hot chests.'

Still, her eyes involuntary lingered at the towel…


However delightful it was to see his little assistant blush, the silence was too uncomfortable even for the mighty Sasuke.

"I guess I woke you up and… I'm sorry about that," he said after clearing his throat, taking his eyes of his neighbor, suddenly interested in his breakfast, which wasn't even existing if one was to be objective.


At the sound of his voice Hinata averted her eyes from her boss' sexy body back to his eyes, which, might she add were really intriguing. Most of the time his duck-butt hair – that was falling onto his face – stopped most light from trespassing onto his skin, creating gloomy shadows, aiders to his gloomy reputation. Because of these shadows Sasuke's eyes seemed intimidatingly black from afar, not that anyone had a chance to see them from a closer range these days.

However, now that morning light beamed through the nearby window and Sasuke's wet hair lay differently to the usual because of his recent shower, revealing his face, Hinata found out that those pools were not eternal black but actually a deep dark tone of grey*.

The sunlight played in his eyes, lighting them up from inside. Once again she was dazed.

He cleared his throat again.

Embarrassed even more than before, Hinata stuttered out:

"I-i-it's o-ok-okay."

He looked at her intensely and Hinata, unable to hold his gaze looked down at her bare feet.

"Hn." An awkward pause followed.

If she would look up she'd see Sasuke trying to vocalize words which would make the situation less uncomfortable, but, may they be damned, they just wouldn't come into his genius head. He pondered and tried and tried but no bright ideas came, so the only thing he was able to produce in the end was:

"I'll go and change into something more appropriate."

With that he rather quickly retreated to his bedroom, leaving Hinata in the middle of his fumed kitchen with absolutely no idea how to react to the situation.


As the door closed behind him she sighed. Why did she always manage to get into daft humiliating stories like this? And just when her boss seemed to like her and find her company entertaining she, with her ominous luck, had to ruin everything! Now he'll probably think that she is like other fangirls and will never speak to her again…

Why, why did she open that door? Why didn't she mind her own business? Why did she stare at him like that? If only she could go back in time she would change her decisions and this whole event would be evaded and Sasuke would still think well of her. But, however often she asked Heavens for the ability to travel back in time and alter the past she knew it was impossible and that she just had to live over it.

'That's right, Hinata, just live over it.'

She deeply breathed in and out to calm her nerves down. It helped, until she felt the soot in her throat. Coughing violently, she shambled to the light that was emerging from the window, which, upon reaching she threw open. The fresh air flooded in, soothing her throat and dispersing the smog which hanged bellow kitchen's ceiling.

Curious of what might have caused such great amount of smoke, Hinata walked over to the stove. A saucepan, covered in black powder, gracelessly stood in the middle of the electronic stove her boss afforded for his kitchen. On the saucepan lay a black… um, something. Hinata couldn't tell what it might've been before, it was burned so badly.

"It used to be an omelet." She jumped upon hearing her boss's deep voice as he re-entered the kitchen, drying his still damp hair with a towel, wearing a white shirt, black trousers and matching black socks, "As you see I'm rubbish at cooking anything that involves more than put-into-microwave-for-1-minute."

Hinata heard restored confidence in his voice with a slight playfulness in his tone that he had yesterday. She felt glad that he was still talking, and not avoiding, her.


He noticed a little smile appear on her pretty lips. This was a good sigh, so he continued:

"I suppose I'll have to starve." He added fake sadness into his voice, nearly pouting. Notice 'nearly' – Uchihas don't pout.

But he knew that Hinata wouldn't let him 'starve', she was too caring to allow anyone to starve, even if that someone had a few packs of instant noodles and canned tomato soup tucked in the back of his cupboards which this someone lived on for the last few days. As far as he knew, Hinata was too good to abandon him alone with a cooker so he betted that she would offer her help. Just as he predicted, she did:

"I-I c-could prepare s-something for you i-if you want."

"Oh, thank you. I would appreciate that." He replied with a nod.

"D-do you h-have any pref-preferences?"

"Not really: I'm not allergic to anything, not a vegetarian, so I guess I don't. Though, I like tomatoes."

Hinata quickly nodded and turned to the cupboards and stove.

"M-May I?" she asked timidly, turning her head back to look at Sasuke with those cute eyes of hers.

"Yes, go ahead, feel yourself at home."

She turned around and began exploring the content of his drawers, fridge, freezer and anywhere where there might be any food or kitchen utensils.

While she did so, Sasuke plopped himself on one of the 2 kitchen chairs, continuing to dry his hair with the towel. Observantly, he noted something he didn't notice before – Hinata was wearing a white little silky pajamas dress, lacy at its bottom that only reached her mid-thigh with loose spaghetti straps at the top it exposed a lot of milky skin to Sasuke's greedy eyes. He probably didn't detect this because of the fire situation, or over-naked situation, or maybe both at the same time but now he was enjoying the view.


* Is it just me or was anyone else shocked when they found out that actually, according to , Sasuke has dark grey eyes rather than black?