A/N: Sing my praises. Yes, you love me. I'm awesome. Amazing. Say it, please.

I've updated with a long chapter! Thank the Korean drama 'Personal Taste" for the inspiration. (Lee Min Ho is so beautiful.) Really, I'd lost about half of this chapter, so please forgive the crappy rewriting. The original was loads better, but now it's gone gone gone. Also, I seemed to be quite found of repetition in this chapter, especially in threes. :P

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If I did, Hinata would be proposed to in every chapter by a random male character, Sasuke, in the middle of his blind revenge rants, would say, "Wtf am I doing?" and return to Konoha, and Naruto wouldn't wear so much damn orange.

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Chapter Fourteen
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It was springtime, but the evening air was so cold. It bit mercilessly at her face, cutting into her skin. She closed her eyes to it and cuddled her jacket closer to herself.

It had been an hour since she'd left the Serpent, since she'd breezed past Anko and Sai half in tears and nearly destroyed her red dress in her haste to get it off. Anko had stared gravely at her the whole while, feeling nothing for her creation and everything for her protege.

What had happened? A couple hours ago, she'd been the perfect picture of ladylike poise, of calm and control. The moment she walked into the cafe, though, away from Gaara and Deidara, all of that had dissipated like smoke, and she'd felt an awful chill pass through her.

He hated her. She'd seen his face, seen that utter contempt.

What had she done. What had she done?

Her hands shook as she fumbled with her room key, drunkenly finding the door knob and grasping it firmly. He probably wasn't there, in fact, she really hoped he wasn't. If he was, it meant that either he was moving out...or she was.

She stumbled inside clumsily, closed the door with a heavy sigh, and then nearly shuttled right back when six heads whipped toward her and flashed killer bright smiles.

"Hinata!!" they called out in unison.

It took her a second to regain her composure. She barely recognized the crew-- it was as though her brain was clouded over- her eyes told her that these people were familiar, were her friends, but her mind refused to acknowledge them. Of course it would. They didn't know who...what... she was. They didn't know the truth.

"You weren't here yet," Naruto said, his voice suspiciously lethargic. "We started playing before you guys. Sorry?"

Sasuke wasn't there. She scanned the room and panicked, then reminded herself that this was exactly what she wanted. She didn't know what she'd do with herself if she were alone.

"It's o-o-okay," she said, standing stock-still, several feet away.

Sakura stood up from her precarious perch on the edge of the bed and half-skipped to her. She tossed her arms carelessly around Hinata's neck, eyes half-lidded.

"Loosen up, Hinata." She muzzled her nose into her shoulder and breathed. "Oh..." she exhaled, "You smell good."

A mix of vanilla body spray and Gaara's sharp cologne, mixed in with salt tears and a bit of Deidara's blood.

"Thank you." Sakura was so close. Why did she still feel so distant? Over her shoulder and the tufts of soft pink hair--when had her hands started threading through it?-- she caught Temari's eyes, narrowed, suspicious, but mostly concerned.

Her hand dropped, Sakura mewled in disappointment and pulled away, grabbing Hinata's hands and dragging her down to sit. She crumpled down to her knees like something broken.

At that exact moment, the door burst open.

Hinata felt time freeze around her, felt her heart rate escalate, climbing, climbing, she could hear it pounding in her ears now, a demented drumbeat, and oh god if it didn't stop now she was going to die...

She clutched her hand to her chest, encouraging it to slow. Around her, she could vaguely hear the others talking, but the voices were muted, as though she were listening through a door. Kiba was laughing, obviously drunkenly, and sloshing his beer; Rock Lee, who by principle never drank, edged away from him and exclaimed indignantly that his youthful green attire was dry-clean only. Naruto had just half-squealed, "Teme! You came! I'm so proud!", something that any other day she would have found hilarious, given the way he'd managed to slur 'teme' into a single syllable.

The fear arose raw and real, however, when he spoke.

"Get out."

Had the intruders been sober, they might've considered the consequences of disobeying and fled. As this was not the case, they laughed like he had just told the funniest joke.

"Stop being a prude, Sas-u-gay," Kiba said. Naruto tossed an arm over his shoulder in drunk-manly-loving agreement.

"C'mon, sit down. Look, ain't it lucky? Hinata just showed up too."

Sasuke gave a 'hn' and sat down. She lifted her head nervously. His gaze skimmed right over her, then forced it's way right through, to Tenten.

They sat in silence, detached from the racuous laughter and raunchy joking occurring not six inches away. Hinata idly traced the condensation around the rim of her unopened can, over and over again. She lifted her gaze-- Sasuke was knocking back his like it was water after a tough workout. She winced. He'd been a calm drunk last time, but that time he hadn't been pissed.

Distantly, she heard Kiba declare a game of spin the bottle, yanking an emptied one from behind him. Rock Lee, who was staying chaste for Sakura, quickly opted out, and Sasuke surprised everyone by grunting lowly in acquiesance. Excitedly, Sakura and Tenten squealed about their good fortune--Naruto, Sasuke, Kiba, and Hinata, all at once? (Either they'd be making nice with a cutie, or they'd get a wonderful display of sexy-hot shonen-ai action, or so their warped logic said.)

Someone spun-- Kiba first. The bottle swung wildly for a few turns and slowed. There was a collective howl as it stopped, nose pointed directly at Temari.

The older girl looked down at her verdict, blinked, and then looked up, giving Kiba a dangerously sultry look. The temperature in the room went up ten degrees.

"Now or never," she said teasingly, and then leaned across the circle to grab Kiba by the shirt. He shrugged, chuckled nervously, looked down at her too-close, pressed together cleavage, and pressed his lips to hers.

A moment later, Temari pulled back, wiped her mouth nonchalantly with the back of her hand, and said, no worse for wear, "Next" while Kiba wobbled on his knees like a man sucked of his soul.

Sakura took the bottle next and spun enthusiastically. So enthusiastically, in fact, that she flung it across the room. It landed with a dull thud, pointed at Tenten, who gave her a shrug that said, "Oh, what the hell." Naruto looked like he was about to wet himself in his excitement.

As though they did this every day, the girls loped their arms over each other's shoulders and pecked each other lightly.

Kiba and Naruto looked visibly disappointed; Sasuke hadn't looked at all.

"That wasn't sexy at all," Kiba said sourly.

Tenten glared at him. "This is spin the bottle, not a lesbian strip club," she responded, sounding very sober and very deadly. Kiba instantly clamped his mouth shut. It was a well known fact that Tenten had a penchant for collecting knives.

Naruto loped over to the end of room, retrieved the bottle, and handed it dutifully to Sasuke. Hinata stiffened, her fists clenching in her lap.

Sasuke studied the bottle like he'd never seen one before, turning it over and over again in his hands. His eyes were half-lidded, mouth tight.

'He's completely wasted.'

Slowly, he placed the bottle on the floor and spun. It was lethargic. It took barely a second for it to settle and stop-- on her.

She got her wish-- for a moment, her heart stopped.

Sasuke's eyes lifted from the ground to her wide ones. It was the first time he'd looked at her since the restaurant.

She shuddered. His gaze. It was so...empty.

The girls were high-diving and squealing in sheer joy-- what more could they ask for? The pretty, timid, girlish uke, and his badboy hunk seme. It was a scene right out of a shonen-ai manga.

Except said seme never looked quite so murderous, and said uke not quite so terrified. (Or they didn't in the series they read; Sakura and Tenten preferred the innocent true-love crap.)

Hinata moved conspicuously to the balls of her feet, prepared to stand and escape. "I-I don't think--!"

"You don't think what, Hyuuga?" Sasuke snapped. He leaned forward, grabbed her face roughly in his hands, and forced it an inch from his. Sakura gave a shriek of ecstasy and promptly fainted.

She'd forgotten how beautiful he was. Even now, with his dark eyes piercing and a healthy-looking bruise splayed out under one eye, he was gorgeous. She'd have been much more at ease if he weren't. Like this, he looked like vengeful angel, righteously indignant, willing to stop at nothing to punish those who had sinned against him.

He closed the distance between them.

It was rough, it was hard. The movements were clumsy and obviously inexperienced, but forceful. What was he trying to do? This was nothing like the kiss Deidara had given her-- that had left her feeling weightless, had made her bones turn to butter, even given the circumstances. This one shifted her body to high alert. She stiffened, squirmed, struggled. His hands, desperate, slid from her face to her waist, and he was crushing her to him, knocking the the air right out of her chest. Even their tipsy audience could tell that this was no game, not even a declaration of love. It was a fight for dominance, an accusation, an indictment.

Twisting her arms out from between them, her hands found his hair. She tugged back on it and was surprised when he gave in easily, withdrawing with an abrupt smack.

Oh god. The irises stretched over his eyes; they bore down on her like a pair of black holes. His lips were blood-red-- they'd fought valiantly enough.

Oh god. She'd hurt him. She could see all the million accusations storming out at her in this silence, this cold, chilling, terrifying quiet. Why wasn't Naruto screaming like he usually did? Anything to break the tension.

He stood wordlessly and left. Hinata could only watch as the door clicked shut.

Sasuke was gone for three days and four nights.

On the first day, she'd cut class and skipped rehearsal, terrified of meeting him again. Instead, she'd spent the day with a full box of Kleenex, blinds drawn, knees to chest, replaying the moment she'd pushed him away in her mind again and again, realizing with each second that Deidara had been right, that he probably had liked her, and she'd might as well have taken a cleaver to his heart.

The second day, she was furious. She'd stomped into Kurenai's classroom with all the theatrics of a demon-child, neither giving nor offering explanation for her sudden moods. Her portrait of a male had come out looking precisely like her roommate (former-roommate, she reminded herself as she rubbed charcoal into the eyes, making them black-black-black).

She hated him that day. Any one with sense ought to have reacted the way Sai had, or even Deidara, she reasoned furiously. Even if she weren't a male, she was still Hinata, and if Hinata wasn't good enough for him, well, he sure as hell wasn't good enough for her.

On the third day, she felt nothing. She woke up to a room that she expected to be empty. It was. She poured herself a mug of coffee, black, though she usually loaded it with cream and sugar, and distantly contemplated her plan of action. If he reported her, which she found quite likely, she'd undoubtedly be kicked out. She'd have to get another job, a respectable nine-to-fiver, keep her mind busy with her late nights at the Serpent, and gradually earn enough money for another year's tuition. She'd use a chunk of that to move abroad. Maybe America? English was a useful language, after all. Once there, she would apply to a small Liberal Arts school, study every subject under the sun aside from studio art. She'd earn a degree, buy a condo, and let the rest of her life take it's course.

Then again, if he chose to leave her be, she considered transferring out at the semester mark and doing the same exact thing.

She thought these things with no sense of loss. Lips tight, she went to class, apologized to Naruto for yelling at him the day before, and ate lunch.

To the average onlooker, she looked just fine, until they saw her eyes.

"You're out of coffee," Sasuke said sourly, dumping the remnants of the instant mix into a mug of almost-boiling water.

Hozuki glared at him venomously. Sasuke stared back, unfazed, and stirred his coffee with a chopstick.

This bastard was getting on his last nerve. "Look, I said you could stay one night. I think three is..." he bit his lip in thought. "You know. Fish."

Sasuke scoffed. "'Fish and visitors stink after three days?' You call yourself an actor, but you can't even remember that one?"

Okay, prodigy or not, this freshman was pushing it. Look at him. Drinking the last of his coffee. Leaving his dirty clothes all over the floor. Not washing his own freaking dishes. He was Hozuki Suigetsu, fanged badass extraordinaire, not a fucking hotel service.

"Go make up with your roommate," he said. The only person acting more psychotic than Sasuke was his cute little roomie, who'd practically bit him when he corrected one of his lines at rehearsal. Which, by the way, Sasuke wasn't going to either.

Seriously, he was about to make some Fish filet if they didn't get their acts together. And gtfo of his personal space.

"You're out of toothpaste too," Sasuke announced, stepping out of his bathroom with a red toothbrush (what the hell? Was that his too?) sticking half out of his mouth and a lining of blue foam around his lips.

That was it. The little shmuck had crossed the line.

"Sasuke," he stepped right up to him. Sasuke looked down at him, unaffectedly brushing his teeth from side to side. Suigetsu, a firm believer in brushing in circles, cringed and wondered why he'd ever let the bastard in in the first place. "Listen. You've been skipping rehearsal and stealing all of my crap."

Sasuke mumbled something that sounded aggravatingly like, "Not stealing, borrowing," which nearly made Hozuki pop a vessel.

"Spit that out," he said, rubbing his temples. "What the hell are you doing brushing your teeth now? It's three in the afternoon." He was surprised when Sasuke actually obeyed, washed his mouth out, and reemerged three times more intimidating than before.

"You were saying?" Sasuke raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms.

"I was saying," he said, "If you don't pack up and get your ass out of here in the next two minutes, I'm going to do something you really won't like."

Sasuke's eyes darkened in response to the challenge. "You will, will you?"

Easily, Suigetsu hoisted up Sasuke's backpack from on top of his desk. With the laidback calm of a person who knows he is about to exact the perfect revenge, he tugged a window open, unzipped his backpack, and, before Sasuke could scream, "Not my three hundred dollar textbooks!", emptied the contents out.

Sasuke was at his side in seconds, arms outstretched to throttle him.

Except he was already half out the window, staring down in utmost horror, whispering "oh fudgecrack" to himself again and again.

So instead, Sasuke yanked him backwards and whipped him around to face him, stretching his ninety dollar cashmere v-neck sweater in the process. "What?"

"I-" he gasped, eyes wide. "I-I think I just killed someone."

Sasuke twitched, shoved Suigetsu to the side, and peered out the window.

Within seconds, he grabbed his empty backpack, tossed his shirts into it, rushed out the door and practically flew down the stairs.

Seriously, was fate just having a great time messing with him these days?

Hinata was contemplating death.

It was a dark subject, one she only ever touched about once a year when she was feeling particularly moody, or had read some Poe or something. Her mind would snap back to that day, so many years ago. She knew little about her past, just that when she was about five, her entire family had died in a car accident, and that she was the only survivor. For the longest while, she'd been convinced that she didn't
remember anything.

Now she wasn't so sure.

The images came in nightmares; the nightmares came as distorted stop-image scenes. The car moving, she cooing at a toddler strapped snugly in a carseat--her sibling?--a woman, she could tell she was heartbreakingly beautiful, even though all she could see were her eyes (pale, like hers, and warmer than any she'd ever seen) smiling back at them. Then, a lurch, a bang, a crunch--they're flying, the baby's screaming, it's high-pitched like a banshee's cry--then pain, and blood (so much of it) and the woman's eyes are dulled. Next she's gone gone gone and wakes up in a cold sweat with her arms curled tightly around Bun-bun, whom Sasuke has left behind. It smells like him.

She asked herself, with slightly more emotion than she had been exhibiting lately, why she had been left behind.

It was at that moment that she felt something solid and heavy connect with her skull, like a bludgeon. She was down in a second flat, with only enough time to smile at the cheap trick Kami had played on her.

He found her lying in a crumpled heap on the grass, arms folded over her chest like a corpse. His heart stopped, then he saw her chest rising steadily and he relaxed. A small crowd had formed, everyone pointing and exclaiming stupidly, nobody actually doing a damn thing to help.

Sasuke shoved past them.

"Hey man," one of his victims said, "That isn't co--"

Sasuke shoved him again, this time by the face.

He didn't even think, just knelt down and gathered her up. She was heavy--he wasn't surprised, after seeing her in a dress he realized how curvy she actually was (how hadn't he noticed those hips before? They were glaring in his face now) but he didn't care. Blood trickled down her forehead.

"Suigetsu," Sasuke shouted over to his panicking upperclassman, who'd scurried frantically down the stairs after him, "Get my stuff. I'm taking Hinata to the infirmary."

Suigetsu, who had seen Sasuke slam some guy's face in barely a minute ago, nervously obliged.

She awoke abruptly to white walls and soft classical music-- Pachelbel Canon? Her hand darted to her head and she groaned. There was cloth instead of skin, some kind of large, unsightly bandage. It hurt. She bit her lip.

Someone pulled back the curtain, and then a tall form was hovering over her bed, brow furrowed and eyes dark.

"You're up."

She should've been more surprised to see him; really, she was just relieved.

"Yes."

Sasuke sighed, and then turned away. He dropped into a chair, suspiciously close to her cot.

"Thank you," she whispered. "You know, for bringing me." And talking to me. And not leaving me.

He grunted lowly, and then stood again. "I think I'm going to report you," he admitted gruffly.

She smiled; she'd anticipated this. "Okay."

His eyes narrowed. "Don't you hate me?" Kami, why did he sound so desperate?

She shook her head, a bit amused in spite of herself. "No, I don't think so." A pause. "Actually, I think I like you a bit. You're a good...you're a good friend."

Weak. Even in this situation, he felt his heart lurch, his muscles clench. His head spun. Hinata was still smiling, not sunnily like she normally did, but contentedly. It was mature and demure. Even dressed in frumpy boy clothes and with dirt in her hair, he thought she was terribly, terribly cute.

His hands moved to her chin, tilting it up. He saw the smile drop, the eyes widen in fear, the hands fist in her sheets. Leaning down, he watched her struggle helplessly with a sick kind of glee.

"I'm not your friend," he said simply, and then let her go, snapping the curtains back and walking away. He listened with satisfaction to the badly concealed sobs coming from her corner and smirked.

It felt good to feel that, for once, he'd won, even if he wasn't quite sure what.

***

A/N: Chapter close! –curtains drop-

I don't know how to feel about this chapter. Tell me your opinions, by you know, clicking that wonderful little button just below. You know, the one that says Review. That one. Cha. :D