"Don't start, Hyuga," Tenten warned as she focused her eyes on the fire. She threw another bit of broken twig off the large branch she was using as kindle into the flames and arched an eyebrow up instead of turning towards him as he sat next to her.
"I assure you that…" he paused, wrinkling his brow. He sat causally back on the log as if he had remembered something and looked like he was pondering his next sentence. He stated almost to himself, "Now I get the nectar reference."
She gave him a half-lidded you-are-pushing-your-luck look and clenched her jaw. Neji quickly cleared his throat as if to apologize, and ended up stating a quick "sorry," anyways.
"It is just… you smell like a girl," he said suddenly and unhelpfully.
"I AM a girl," she left out the dipshit at the end of the sentence, though she was sure Neji felt the sentiment just as well.
"Well," Neji tried to explain quickly, shifting with nervousness on the log, the even tones of his voice starting to fray in fear of her wrath. "You are a ninja."
"I fail to see how those are mutually exclusive," she could hear Gai and Lee, who had confiscated her bag of oils, perfumes, bath salts and lotions, discussing the items with awe as they rummaged through the gift bag that Shino had given to her a few days before. They sniffed at bottles with fervor, then traded the one they were sniffing for whatever one was in the other's hands. Tenten thought they kind of looked like monkeys finding tools for the first time. They oohed and ahhed at each scent, and the slight clinking of the glass bottles made Tenten wonder if the strong men had enough sense not to break them with their super strength during their inspection.
Neji tilted his head to the side, then narrowed his gaze on her bangs. He reached a hand out to touch a wisp of hair between the pads of his fingers and examined it.
Tenten let out an exasperated breath, rolled her eyes and leaned over on the log to reach for the second goodie bag that Shibi had presented her with. Shibi insisted that she take it with her before she left the compound, and she had fallen in love with the shampoo, conditioner, and leave-in shine spray ever since. She had never been pampered like this before. She normally got a weapon for any kind of special occasion, not that she was complaining about that. Girly-girl things like this never, ever crossed her path. She simply couldn't allow herself to feel guilty for liking and using something so completely wonderful. She knew she didn't deserve it, but part of her wanted to think that Shino thought she did. She didn't want to let go of that.
Neji smiled like a little kid and turned around, swinging his leg over the log to straddle it while Tenten took out his hair tie and began to comb through his long locks with the wide-toothed comb that had come with the set.
"Just when I was starting to catch up on not having the worst hair on this team. No wonder you guys don't consider me a girl." Tenten muttered as she sprayed the hair shine on Neji's already perfect hair. Lee and Gai crooned in the background about climbing the Himalayas, and she remembered one of her bath salts had pink Himalayan salt in the ingredients.
"Shino, rest assured, hasn't forgotten you are a girl," Neji reminded her and turned around on the log to face her.
Tenten let out a long exhaustive sigh.
"Alright Hyuga," Tenten put the sprits bottle and comb back in her pack, "What are you getting at?"
He didn't have to shrug his shoulders. He merely stared at her sternly with wide, white eyes. "You tell me."
"Hey, it's not like…" she didn't get to finish her statement as Gai and Lee had sandwiched her in an organ-squishing hug. Tenten turned red and worried about her spleen, while Gai and Lee gushed about flowers and youth, all the while holding the expensive fragrant bottles in their hands and weeping.
Neji snatched a bottle out of Lee's hand and smelled the opulent oil with a regal authority. The look on his face told her that his discussion with her about the Aburame was far from over.
Tenten just waited out the tears of joy and jumping up and down with enthusiasm until she could breathe again. Gai and Lee were especially riled up about her little gifts. She was kind of hoping that the aroma therapy would have calmed them down instead of hyping them up. Then again, she was quite sure a tranq gun was the only thing capable of getting those members of her team to settle down once someone got them going.
Neji handed her the bottle he took from Lee. "I hope you know that as wealthy as my family is, Hinata doesn't even have anything comparable to this quality."
She wasn't sure she knew how to feel about that.
She knew that she missed Shino's company. She missed casually meeting him outside the Hyuga compound before and after training, and flirting with him. She missed how his hands always found their way out of his pockets and onto her skin, even if it was only for the briefest of moments. She missed walking with him after training was done, brushing up beside him and sharing private conversations and thoughts and jokes and smiles. She had gotten quite attached to him, and now being sent off to northern Fire country seemed like a punishment, a banishment of sorts, all in the name of some crazy mission meant to flush out another wack-job of a shinobi that had a vendetta against the Aburame.
It was nice that her team was allowed to escort her. They would be staying with her and taking on the mission of "protecting" her while she waited until her "fiancé" came to court her. They would remain with her until the mission was complete, staying on the grounds as extra insurance. Apparently, there was a non-familial clan, the Kobashii, that regularly interacted with the Aburame clan and were more than happy to house Team Gai in an effort to snuff out the nin who had also been a mutual thorn in their side.
The Kobashii clan owned a large estate on the outskirts of a provincial town on the edge of a large river that supported much of the town's commerce. She wasn't surprised that the clan owned and specialized in growing medicinal and aromatic plants, the same ones that no doubt were in her little bath kit she had been given by Shino.
She wasn't sure if she felt better or worse that the expensive products that were given to her had probably come by the Aburame family without much effort or cost.
She decided it wasn't worth wasting her time thinking about and focused on her mission instead. Yoshin Nami swore to make it his personal mission to get back at the Aburame clan. Tenten wondered if this didn't have something to do with the last mission she was assigned with Shino, since the ring leaders of that drug carting syndicate also held a personal grudge against his clan. Shibi had hypothesized with Shikaku that his attack would be personal, making his son, or anyone surrounding his son, a target.
Tenten was just bait for this guy to take. She was to stay as a special guest in the Kobashii residence on the outskirts of the city, exposing herself as the future Aburame wife to Shino during her visits to the city in an attempt to draw him out. Shino would come to the Kobashii estate to woe her on dates, parading her around town for everyone to see.
She wondered what it would be like, pretending to date the Aburame and living at the Kobashii residents for an extended period. She couldn't get Shibi's voice out of her head about how she was going to be the only one to save him if it all came down to it. The building pressure of the mission mixed with her real life feelings towards Shino gave Tenten a very bad feeling about how all of this was going to go down.
Tomorrow, her team would arrive at their destination, and she would find out just what she was up against as soon as Shino arrived there a week later.