Heaven Forbid
Disclaimer: Same old, same old.
Author's Note: So, this chapter should actually be titled "Occurrences", but I have to keep to my little theme because I'm a crazy PMS-er when it comes to that kind of junk. Anyway, it's a bit of a fluffy/filler chapter; I kind of wanted a break from all that heavy emotionalism between the two. I guess you can say there's relationship development, but it's more of a series of almost sex scenes. And there's too much dialogue, but it's a great way to convey their relationship, especially since I fail at authoring a physical one. Oh, jeez, I fail. Heh.
Oh man, I just realize I've never thanked my anonymous reviewers! So, thank you guys for supporting me anonymously! My anonymous reviewers (or those who did not bother to sign in at the time) are: Oturan Ikamuzu, WfCP, Akane16th, Lexxi, Kairi no Baka, Rin-rin, Anonymous Reviewer (fitting...), shloop!, L, and MysteriousStranger. Thank you guys for supporting me despite not having accounts or whatever other circumstances!
Warning: Almost contains lemons, but does not for the author's lack of knowledge in those areas. All scenes of foreplay and such were stimulated by the author's imagination and experience via movies - please do not be offended by any political incorrectness.
Enjoy!
It was strange—almost like they were a completely new couple. That is, it would have been if Tenten was not an acclaimed kunoichi in her village and Hidan was not an infamous enemy of it.
The man slowly regained his ability to move freely, but he still confined himself to her apartment for fear of being caught. Tenten, meanwhile, shepherded all her friends away from the building altogether, conjuring numerous excuses that ranged from the mundane to the exceptionally bizarre.
"My place is an absolute mess," she claimed one day when Lee suggested yet another team bonding session at her house, since he hosted the last one and Neji refused to allow them into the Hyuuga compound at all. "Really, it's like all of the Great Shinobi Wars occurred in my apartment."
When Sakura, Ino, and Hinata wanted to have a girls' night while Temari was still in Konoha, the weapons mistress insisted, "Some training genin broke my window with a smoke bomb that went off later and turned out to be a stink bomb instead, and now everything smells like shit."
Despite any protest, Tenten successfully convinced them her apartment was in absolutely no condition for visiting of any sort. Oddly enough, Hidan was the only one insisting that she receive guests.
"I wanna meet your friends!" he proclaimed. "'Sides, if they try any funny shit, I'll beat the fuckin' crap outta them!"
"No, you won't," scolded the brunette with a roll of her eyes. "They're my friends, and thus, you aren't allowed to fuck with them in any way, shape, or form."
He snorted. "Like I'd want to fuck with any of them," he laughed derisively as he looked into one of her many team pictures. "From the looks of things, they're either dumbasses or assholes. Either way, I don't butt-fuck."
"Hidan…"
"Except to you, of course," the former Akatsuki promised her. Somehow, it came as little reassurance to the kunoichi.
Tenten sighed. "You know why you can't be seen, not even by my closest friends."
He reciprocated her sigh. "I know, but I don't have to like it. This 'hiding' bullshit is fucking killin' me!"
"Hidan…"
"Sorry, Mother," he sneered without malice. Grinning wickedly, he strutted—yes, strutted—into their bedroom. (He considered it 'theirs' as they had shared the bed for the past several days, but she still considered it 'hers'; Hidan was merely borrowing for an indeterminable time.)
Tenten huffed and returned to her previous task, the wondrous art of vegetable slicing, which she had been youthfully tutored in by none other than her sensei, Maito Gai.
"Cutting a vegetable takes an aesthetic grace that very few, the most youthful of the youthful, possess," he told her during their 'lessons', while she pretended to be listening attentively. Ironically enough, Tenten was, according to Gai, apparently among the most youthful of the youthful, for she could cut her vegetables with exact precision, while Lee and Neji struggled to slice without injuring themselves.
Perhaps it was her culinary tendencies, or maybe her mastery of weapons, but Tenten put little thought into it.
The tomatoes successfully and painlessly sliced into perfectly slim circles, Tenten placed the slivers in the refrigerator and followed Hidan into her room, fully intent on taking a shower after a hard day of vegetable cutting.
Unfortunately, the weapons mistress, clothed in nothing but a towel toga, discovered that her bathroom was occupied.
"Hidan, get out."
Hearing a toilet flush, she felt relieved until the man poked his head out of the door and whispered, almost secretively, "But I'm gonna take a shower."
"No, I'm going to take a goddamned shower."
"But I'm already stark-fuckin'-naked!" he protested irritably.
"Then get dressed and get the hell out!"
"Too much work," he sighed. "Why don't we just share?" When she choked at his question, he inquired further, "Why not? I mean, it's not like you've got anything I haven't seen already. And we can conserve your water bill. Plus, wouldn't it look less suspicious having only one shower a day?"
"No."
"You're naked, I'm naked, and the shower's waiting. Couples shower together all the fuckin' time."
"No."
With a snide smirk, Hidan, in all his naked glory, reached out and dragged the young woman in, throwing her protective towel to the floor in a crumpled heap. Before she could even react to his assault, they stood together in the shower with the hot water cascading over their nude bodies.
"Asshole!"
She tried to step on his foot, but he turned her around and, with one hand firmly on her shoulder to keep her from twisting away, began tenderly massaging her back. Belatedly, Tenten realized he was using soap.
Wrenching her shoulder from his grip, she faced him with a smirk. "You should know you always start with the hair," she gloated teasingly before pressing her lips to his. True to her word, she entangled her fingers in his silvery hair, digging into his scalp with fiery desire as they pressed their soaked bodies against each other.
After what could have been a decade for both, they parted, and Hidan wryly noted, "As long as the shower's on, the neighbors won't know what glorious acts of love we're up to."
The brunette raised an eyebrow at his choice of words. "Glorious?"
"All in the name of Jashin!"
Few words had been spoken during their shower incident. Actually, it was less of a shower incident than a began-in-the-shower-yet-moved-to-the-bed-despite-drenching-the-sheets-and-mattress incident, since the bed was far more comfortable than the tiny shower, in Tenten's opinion. Hidan, on the other hand, was up for anything.
"How about the kitchen?" he ventured thoughtfully, propping his head up with his arm as he gazed appreciatively at the young woman. "You can wear an apron—I mean, just an apron."
"Kinky much?"
He threw his head back to chortle good-naturedly, at least more so than he had before in Tenten's encounters with the man. For him, a great burden had been lifted since their reunion, as though his return to her abode represented some sort of homecoming for him and renewal for her. Whatever the sensation, it was a pleasant one.
Hidan stared listlessly at Tenten, who smiled back with equal lethargy, though he found hers infinitely more attractive. "I like that look on you."
"What? The only-wearing-an-apron look? How's that better than my completely butt-naked look?" she snorted.
"Hey, I like you naked, and I do entertain the apron idea, but what I meant was…" He paused, seeming to struggle for the appropriate words. "You—You're—" Patiently, Tenten inclined her head with interest, inadvertently making Hidan absolutely forget the compliment he was about to pay her in favor of perpetual and unusual attraction to the young woman. "I mean to say…uh…"
She tilted her head further, her loose hair splaying over his shoulder as she whispered wickedly into his ear, "Well, I like nervous on you. It's…cute."
"I love you!"
Hidan squeezed his violet eyes shut tightly, anticipating a slap to his cheek or perhaps some form of verbal abuse from the girl in the knowledge that his presence occasionally angered her. However, neither came, despite being fully aware that he would react to neither action.
"Hidan…"
"I'm not sorry I brought that up!" he cried, keeping his eyes shut. "I'm so not fucking sorry! I don't give a right shit—or a left shit for that matter—if you don't love me anymore or if you ever loved me at all—'cause if you did, you'd have to be a real fucking moron—but I had to tell you. There, I said it!"
Recovering from his short-lived rant, he cracked open one eye to discover the weapons mistress smiling kindly at him. Then he opened the other and realized that, no, she was not smiling at him but instead laughing—rather hard, too.
"You're the moron!" she gasped finally, to which he glared. At his severe glance, she sobered up, though the remnants of a grin remained in her slightly upturned lips. "You really are an idiot."
When she gave no explanation, Hidan petulantly inquired, "Why's that?"
"'Cause you don't fucking realize I love you, have loved you, and will always love you, you hobo."
"Y'mean 'you mofo'?"
"I hope not. That's kinda gross." To prove her point, she scrunched her nose in disgust.
He kissed her furrowed skin. "So how about that apron in the kitchen idea?"
Slapping him lightly, Tenten challenged, "When you just wear a tie in the living room!"
Smirking, the missing-nin inquired, "So where are the ties stored in your apartment?"
"I can't believe you…"
"I am pretty fucking awe-inspiring. I render some people speechless at times."
Tenten snorted disbelievingly, "Some people don't know how to respectfully treat the mentally retarded."
"Hey!"
The kunoichi stood before the kitchen counter the next day, mixing her various sliced vegetables in batter to make tempura. Normally, she used shrimp to make the stir-fried dish, but there was a recent shrimp shortage. As Konoha was a landlocked village, seafood had to be imported from the Land of Fire's sea towns or even from the Land of Water. Livestock was always abundant, fortunately, due to the local farms, but fish sometimes became a scarcity when ties with the Land of Water became particularly strained.
Arms wrapped around her waist from behind, and Tenten, momentarily forgetting her prior task, leaned backward into the strong figure of Hidan, her breaths slowing to match his steady intakes.
"You're just wearing a tie," she observed amusedly without looking around. She had no need to, considering…
"You're just wearing an apron," pointed out the man, equally delighted. "I guess we're both a couple of fools, eh?"
"Fools in love," corrected the kunoichi, turning around in his grasp to kiss him chastely on the chin. But when he tilted his head for more, a scolding finger halted his parted lips, and he glanced questioningly at the young woman.
She explained with a smirk, "At least let me finish making dinner."
Glaring in faux anger, he untangled his hands from the tie of her apron—apparently, he had been attempting to fulfill his fantasies—and sat at the table in a huff, waiting for her to finish the tempura. As she worked efficiently, he gazed intently at her virtually naked back, raking his eyes over every detail that, only a day before, he ran his hands over.
Hand on her hip and a tray of food in her other palm, Tenten interrupted his train of thought, "I know we're low on meat, but you don't need to look at me like I'm a piece of one."
Hidan, coughing, turned his attention to the vegetable tempura and dug in with almost nonexistent restraint. He was grateful for the distraction from the brunette's highly attractive body.
Raising an eyebrow, Tenten seated herself across from him at her table, letting her legs sprawl out beneath the low surface. Dipping her own tempura in soy sauce, she stretched one leg out so it brushed Hidan's crossed limbs. Using her foot, she began disentangling his legs while she merely continued eating.
She grinned inwardly upon noting that the man had frozen completely in mid-bite, staring attentively—no, hungrily—at her as she licking some dripping soy sauce off the side of her thumb. Their legs overlapped in a heated mess beneath the table, but their eyes gazed coolly above it. Hidan swallowed.
In a flash, he leapt off his seat cushion, over the low table, and onto Tenten, pinning her onto the carpeted floor with a nearly animalistic expression. She reached up and pulled him by his tie onto her, with nothing but her apron separating their bodies. Hidan, ever the impatient one, flipped her over and began fiddling with the knot of the garment.
Finding the strings too troublesome to untie, he flipped her back over, grabbed the top of it above her bosom, and ripped the cloth right off her body.
Lying side by side on the floor of Tenten's kitchen/living/dining room, the pair breathed heavily after their previous activity—namely, sex.
"I knew the apron would be a good idea, but hell, that was fuckin' magic."
"Love you, too."
With a tired groan, Hidan tilted his head to stare at Tenten, whose amber eyes remained fixed on the ceiling. "I'm not in it just for the sex."
Tenten sighed deeply and finally turned to face him. "I know."
The light-haired man scowled at her apathetic response. Noting his discomfort, the weapons mistress elaborated, "I just don't want to go back to how I used to be…when I thought you left me."
He winced. "I'm sorry."
"For this time," she scoffed, "but you and I both know it's not going to last. You're going to have to run, and I'm going to have to stay and protect my village against you. I love you—so much—but my loyalty is always to the Leaf. To my home."
"Later."
"What?"
"Later!" he asserted firmly. "I don't want to think about that now. Right now, all I give a shit about is that I love you, you love me, and we're together. That's all I need!"
Touched by his passionate declaration, Tenten moved to kiss him, but they were interrupted by a poorly timed knock on her apartment door. Behind the wooden slab, a voice inquired, "Tenten? Is someone with you? I felt a chakra signature."
"Crap! It's Ino!" hissed the brunette at Hidan. "You didn't hide your chakra?"
"I did! But…"
"But what?" she snapped, rushing to a cupboard to tear out a tablecloth to use as a makeshift cover.
Hidan, deciding the argument was not worth pursuing, shrugged and watched her struggle with the linen. "You distracted me."
"Tenten?" asked Ino again with another rap.
"Coming!" called the brunette as she finished wrapping herself in the tablecloth. "Hide!" she whispered vehemently to Hidan, but he was already heading toward the apartment's bedroom.
Satisfied that the view from the entrance appeared to be not suspicious, Tenten finally opened the door and grinned at her blonde friend. "Ino! What a nice surprise!"
The mind-jutsu expert arched a carefully plucked eyebrow at her friend's choice of attire. "Shower?"
Tenten nodded, straining to keep her smiling façade.
"At three?" Ino continued skeptically.
"What is this—an interrogation? Aren't you off-duty?"
The blonde laughed at the other young woman's irritated tone, "Sorry, just wanted to say 'hi', that's all. But from the look of things, you don't need any other company at the moment."
"What?"
Ino smirked knowingly and shook her head. "You've been unusually flustered during our whole conversation, you avoided my questions on your so-called shower, and if you had really been in the shower, you would have grabbed a towel more easily than a tablecloth…So can he hook me up with a hottie?"
After exhaling deeply in relief, Tenten rolled her eyes at the request of the blonde. "His…friends live kind of…far away." As she fibbed, Tenten could not help but think: Hidan has friends?!
"Ooh, foreigner," gushed Ino, clapping her hands together excitedly. "I love a man with an accent!"
"Ino…"
"Right, you're busy, I should leave. Got it." Waving, Ino stepped away from the apartment with her final parting words, "Have fun!"
Tenten slammed the door, banging her head on it afterwards. "Ow!"
"Moron," scoffed Hidan, emerging from the bedroom and wearing pants. "Who was that?"
The weapons mistress rubbed her forehead, pinching the bridge of her nose when the pain refused to subside. "My friend, Ino."
Hidan, in one of his few and rare moments of contemplation, appeared thoughtful and remained silent, staring at the door in befuddlement.
Perturbed by his unnatural state of serenity, Tenten ventured to ask, "What?"
Knocked from his reverie, the man shifted his gaze to her, startling the young woman with his widened violet eyes.
"She looks like a hot Deidara."