Title: Scars and Stitches

Characters: Team Gai

Genre: Friendship/Romance/Angst

Summary: A love triangle of Gai-stronomic proportions.

Chapter Thirteen

Neji

"Please listen to me right now! You two can't fight!"

He heard the frustration in her voice, even when she and Lee were a good ten feet away, standing in front of the kicking pole the taijutsu expert was currently using for warm-up. She was trying to convince him to not push through with the duel, but it was obvious that she was not going to succeed.

He watched with cold indifference as the kunoichi continued to nag at their teammate, her face shifting in different degrees of anger, fear, and resignation. She, too, knew it was futile to stop the fight; once Lee had set his mind on something, not even their former sensei could talk him out of it.

Not that he had any plans of backing out of the challenge either.

"This whole rivalry thing is so stupid! I thought you two had outgrown it by now!"

He could still hear her, and he saw Lee's mouth moving in answer as he threw another kick at the pole. He couldn't hear what he said, but whatever it was, it made their female friend freeze for a fraction of a second, before her face burned up a dark shade of red.

He frowned; he had never seen her blush, at least not that much. He suddenly felt an urge to march over to where the two were standing and yank her away from Lee, drag her far, far away and shake her, hard, just so she'd snap at him and maybe beat him up, and promptly forget whatever conversation she just had with their overzealous friend.

But he was Hyuuga Neji, and it wasn't in his nature to be overly dramatic about anything. So he stood there and watched silently as she stuttered a response, too softly even for him to hear.

Something about her sudden shy, demure nature struck a raw nerve in him, and he silently turned around, not wanting to see more of it. He didn't stir, not even when he heard her wobble awkwardly toward him a few minutes past.

"Neji!" she hissed, but he did not turn to face her. He heard her growl and mutter a foul word, and a few seconds more and she was in front of him, clinging to her crutch in an effort to remain upright. "I can't smack some sense into that idiot! Please don't be as difficult as he is!"

He met her eyes, glaring at her more coldly than he intended. But he knew she was immune to it by now—his famous Hyuuga Neji glare—and true enough, she did not flinch, even matched him evenly with an equally venomous stare.

"You have got to stop this nonsense right now!" she all but wailed, clasping her crutch tighter. "You're the more mature one, right? This whole challenge, this is so pointless! Please do not tell me you're seriously going to fight Lee over nothing!"

"I'm a man of my word, Tenten," he replied, daring her to disagree.

The kunoichi wrinkled her nose in a sour expression. "Man of my word my ass," she snapped. "You're just as pigheaded as Lee is!"

Neji smirked at this; the discussion was obviously over, whether she liked it or not.

When she realized there was no point trying to convince him either, she exhaled loudly and pointed an angry finger at him. "Fine!" she yelled. "Go beat each other up for all I care! Just don't expect me to drag your sorry asses to the hospital once you're both comatosed on the ground!"

She pivoted, effectively turning her back against him, muttering something like "Where the hell is Gai when you need him?" before she lost her balance and started titling to her right, waving her free hand wildly in attempt to regain her balance.

Neji immediately caught her, wrapping an arm around her waist until she gained steady footing. They stood still for a few seconds, before she slowly, painfully detached herself away from him. "You're both idiots," she whispered, taking a step back.

"Maybe we are," he answered simply, and she raised her head and looked at him again, but the glare was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was a hint of sadness reflected in her eyes, something he realized he didn't like seeing on her face.

"Can you believe that guy?" she then whispered, and Neji watched as her eyes shifted from him to the shinobi a few feet away, still kicking the training pole with utmost fervor. "Here I was, ready to move on, and he does something as ridiculous as this." She sighed, and something in Neji's chest ached. "I'd personally strangle him if it didn't hurt so much."

Neji knew she was not talking about her injured foot.

"When this is over," he murmured, forcing her to look back at him, "Whatever the result is, we'll talk." His tone made it clear that it was not up for discussion.

She nodded slowly, and there was something in her eyes that he could not read, something that unsettled him, ruffled his insides that for a split second, he found that he could not breathe. And then she was reaching out to him, but her hand suddenly froze midway, and his mind flashed back to a couple of weeks ago, when he had tried to hold her but stopped halfway, and the stirring in his chest suddenly increased tenfold.

He lifted his arm to hold her just as she started to pull away, but a firm grip suddenly held him in place, and he turned to his left and found Lee looking at him gravely, the Green Beast's hand clamped tightly around his wrist.

"Neji," Lee's voice was that of steel, "I will request of you to not hold our teammate in an intimate manner until we settle this matter."

His face hardened, and he almost did not hear his female best friend screech in response. "Lee! The hell!"

The taijutsu expert turned to her. "I meant what I said, Tenten. From now on, I will protect your honor, even from Neji."

The prodigy found it unsettling that Lee was not spouting litanies about youth and blossoming flowers.

"Let's get this over with then," he said, flicking his wrist away from his challenger.

He turned and walked toward the center of the clearing, and he heard Lee follow suit. Stopping in the middle of the field, the two faced each other, and in his peripheral version he saw his best friend wobble toward the nearest tree, awkwardly leaning against its trunk, her stance tense.

"Ready?" he asked his opponent, and Lee answered him by taking his usual fighting stance—right arm forward, palm upward, left arm crossed behind his back.

Neji nodded, extending his left arm forward, his palm facing forward, his right arm pulled back, palm facing down. He shifted his left leg forward and bent his knees, preparing himself for the upcoming attack.

"Here I come!" Lee suddenly yelled, and suddenly Neji was blocking arms and legs left and right, dodging kicks and punches to his head, chest, and shoulders. He placed a palm against the ground and pulled himself up, spinning deftly just in time to avoid getting kicked in the face by Lee's foot. He ducked next, then jumped again, and rolled once away from a well-aimed fist.

Lee suddenly stopped and jumped back, frowning. "That's enough of a warm-up," he said, and suddenly his weights were off, and somewhere to their left, he heard the kunoichi gasp.

And Lee was upon him again, kicking and spinning and throwing punches and uppercuts, and Neji had to double his efforts to not get hit—he knew from experience of a drunk Lee that it was not a pleasant thing to be at the receiving end of one of those punches.

Finally, the taijutsu master paused for half a second—a foolish move—and Neji started with his offense.

Palms and fingers rushed forward in different directions, intent on hitting chakra points and vital organs. Lee dodged all, throwing one or two kicks in retaliation before being bombarded with attacks from Neji again.

Minutes more and they stopped, neither left unscathed. Neji wiped the blood running down his lower lip from a kick he received from Lee, while Lee gripped his shoulder, where Neji had managed to not only to close his chakra points, but dislocate a joint as well.

And then Lee was crossing his arms, and Neji tensed as he recognized the stance. He heard their female friend suddenly screech somewhere to their left. "Lee! Don't!"

But the Green Beast's body had already begun to release steam, and they locked eyes—prodigy and genius of hard work— just as Lee said, "This is a technique I mastered so I could defeat you, Neji. Are you ready?"

"Lee, no!" The kunoichi was still screaming. "Gai said you cannot use that!"

"Tenten," the taijutsu master replied, very calmly, given the circumstances. "This technique is for protecting people important to me. That includes you."

Something in Neji snapped at Lee's words—was he insinuating that Tenten was not important to him?

"B-but . . . " He heard her voice waver, and the crack in his chest widened. He barely realized he had taken the stance to perform the kaiten.

"Let's go," he said then, and Lee nodded vigorously, teeth suddenly pinging perfectly, and damn him, smiling like that, like things would still be the same after this.

"Fifth Gate: Gate of Limit—Open!"

"Lee! No!"

"Eight Trigrams One Hundred Twenty-Eight Palms!"

"Neji! Stop!"

And then Lee was attacking, speed triple than his first, and Neji was spinning twice as quickly as before, and Tenten screamed and screamed for them to stop, stop this madness! I don't want you guys to kill each other, you fools!

And then, as quickly as it started, the duel was over.

Neji found himself on top of Lee, left hand pinning his right arm down, right fist—not palm, not fingers to close chakra points—but fist, poised down to strike his best friend's already battered face. Lee's free hand was closed around Neji's throat, aimed at crushing his throat.

He suddenly realized that it was only Tenten's frantic yelling that was stopping them from beating each other up more than they should.

Lee, right eye bleeding and half-closed, mustered what was left of his strength and offered him a weak smile. "You know Neji, I think I'm okay with you and Tenten not ending up together after all."

It was then that Neji remembered another conversation from what seemed such a long time ago. He wanted to laugh at how their roles had reversed without him even realizing it.

"Are you in love with Tenten?"

He watched as Lee shook his head slowly, regretfully. "No."

"But you feel something for her."

A short pause, and then, "Yes."

And suddenly he felt spent, as if he had lost the duel, when technically, he was winning just mere seconds ago—or was it a tie? He did not know, didn't care anymore.

Slowly, Neji dropped his arm to his side and pulled himself away from his teammate. And suddenly there was Tenten, crutch thrown carelessly away, and she was kneeling beside him, but she was looking at Lee, not him, and the cracks in his heart finally gave way and he could have sworn he heard it shatter into a million pieces.

"Baka, baka, baka!" she wailed, but there were no tears—no, Tenten was not suited for tears—and he tried to stand, to give them privacy—because he realized that he had, in fact, lost, after all—only to realize that he couldn't really move, and then he was suddenly falling, falling, but Tenten was there, Tenten was catching him, Tenten was hugging him, hugging him with Lee—and they became a tangled mess of aching flesh and bones and sweat—and everything hurt everywhere and he wanted nothing more but to leave, to be alone, but he has no strength left to push her, them, away.

And then she was whispering in his ear, so softly he was not sure if Lee could hear, but he knew it was for him, just for him, not for his beat-up friend locked in her other arm.

"Don't. Just stay, damn it. Please." And Neji remembered a flash of pink, the scent of antiseptic, whitewashed walls, and warm arms around his shaking body.

And he found himself wrapping an arm around her waist, finally allowing her to hold him, hold them, and he whispered back, "I'm not going anywhere. Not anymore."

End of Chapter Thirteen

Useless trivia #1:

As I was happily typing away this chapter, I got distracted by the sight of fried fish and coffee crumble ice cream on our dining table. Moments later and I was munching on both fish and ice cream, pausing in the middle of Neji and Lee's battle. A disgusting combination, but there you go. Made me feel like Orihime from Bleach, truth be told.

Useless trivia #2:

I suck at writing fight scenes.

Useless trivia #3:

Did you guys notice that this is the first Neji chapter where Tenten's name was mentioned apart from dialogue? And that it started appearing somewhere in the middle of the chapter, after an important line? Tee hee. I can see some of you going back the Neji chapters now, neh. Muahahahahaha.

(Unless of course I totally messed up and mistakenly planted one in the previous ones. Yikes.)

Announcement #1:

I just received an editing project which I need to finish by the end of the month (300-plus pages, yikes) so I'm afraid I won't be able to post a new chapter until the first week of March the soonest. Please don't send trolls to threaten me while I'm gone. Pretty please, with marshmallow on top?

Announcement #2:

Typos and subject-verb agreement problems will be dealt with as soon as I'm coherent again.

Anyway, you guys, wow. Just wow. All the reviews I received, and all the PMs. Just, you guys are the best. I love you all. Seriously. I now have 145 reviews, just short of 150, and really, I owe them all to you.

If it was possible for me to give each and every one of you a physical hug and a box of cookies to show my appreciation, I would. But alas, most of you probably live half (or quarter) a world away from me. So I can only express my thanks by trying to write better chapters, and well, showering everyone with virtual marshmallows.

So again, reviews will be lovely, and flames will be used to, wait, I used up all my marshmallows giving them away!