This may or may not be written from personal experience...
I hadn't visited modern Team Gai, and what better way to dive into debauchery and managing mischief than with winter sports?
This one was honestly hard to write... you can't give me a prompt so clearly from a very different fandom and expect me to connect it directly with Nejiten. Regardless, this one was fun. Enjoy 3
Day Seventy-Two – 11 December 2017
Prompt – Mischief Managed
Summary – Troublesome kids and drunken skiing…
Notes – Modern AU
Word Count – 1971
Mischief Managed
As all great nights do, it started with a few drinks.
"Here," Lee handed me a shot of tequila. "Start off the night well, right?"
Neji raised his shot and Lee – the lightweight – raised his beer. Glass and aluminum clacked together and the liquor trailed a hot line into my stomach.
"Jesus," Neji grabbed the tequila bottle to read the label. "What did you buy, Lee? Jet fuel?"
"On the contrary!" Lee exclaimed as he took another sip of his drink. "This is one of the best budget tequilas around!"
"Lee's right, Neji. I don't think you're used to drinking heavy stuff." I nodded matter-of-factly. "Great choice, Lee. The toffee notes are quite nice." I held out my glass for more. It was really a nice tequila for what the money brought.
"Hn," Neji grumbled, and I had to suppress the urge to giggle at his expression. "Whatever. Give me a couple more so I can switch to beer for the rest of the night."
Lee refilled our glasses and two more shots went down the gullet.
"That hits the spot!" I laughed as the fire in my stomach burned comfortably, and I gestured for more. "Once we get through with these we can go out."
Neji wrinkled his nose at the bottle and instead reached for a beer. "No more, I'm good with beer."
I giggled again as I knocked back my last shot. "You're just a baby is all," I said jovially.
"Don't pregame too hard," Neji warned.
I had to scoff at his concern, though I appreciated the gesture all the same. "Not on your life, Hyuga. That was barely a warm-up."
"Yeah!" Lee came to my defense, slamming an empty can down on the table. "We both know Tenten can quite handily drink us under the table!"
He sniffed and crossed his arms. "Don't remind me," he grumbled, even as he started to smile. The last time we drank was still a sore spot for him; having his best buddy and his girlfriend drag his carcass home was not the most proper thing to happen to him. And if there was one thing I knew, it was that Neji loved his propriety.
Thank goodness he'd taken the defeat well. I drank twice as much as he had that night, and while I'd been drunk, I could at least coherently navigate home. Him? Not so much.
"All right!" Lee yanked our backpacks off the counter and began piling in cans of beer. "Let us go have some fun!"
"Easy there, Lee," I laughed. "You only want four or so cans per person, maybe less for you. You know you can't drink much in the first place, and at altitude you get drunk even faster."
He slowed down and put only a handful of cans into each even as he nodded in agreement. "Of course, you are right, Tenten. You are the expert here, after all."
I pushed off from the barstool I sat on in the kitchen and shoved my snow pants back down. "You are absolutely right on that one."
Lee handed Neji and I our backpacks and we headed for the mudroom to shrug on our jackets and helmets and gloves where they sat dripping melted snow from earlier that day. We did a last-minute check to make sure we had everything, then strapped on our boots and headed out the door.
"It doesn't look like it will be busy tonight," Neji remarked, shaking his black mane out over his shoulders as he reached for his helmet hanging on the rack outside.
"Nah, not with it being a Sunday." I shoved my own helmet down onto my head and adjusted my goggles to sit on top before reaching for my board. "Gear up, the lifts are moving."
Lee exuberantly yanked his skis from the rack and shoved his boots into the clips, while Neji secured his helmet and did the same, albeit more subdued. I grabbed my board and strapped a foot in, leaving the other free to propel myself forward over the snow.
"Alright, everyone got ski passes?" Neji asked as we adjusted our gear and prepared to head for the ski lift. When we nodded an affirmation, he said, "right then, let's go. Looks like we'll be one of the first on the runs tonight."
We slid the few feet from the front door to the ski lift, tugging on jackets and gloves to make sure everything was tight and secure. Neji and Lee dragged themselves forward with their poles. I always thought it was rather awkward to manage two skis and a set of poles which was why I opted for my snowboard. Keep it simple on the mountain, that's a rule to live by.
We slid to a halt at the front of the line, waiting for another chair to come around. When the attendant scanned our passes and motioned for us to move forward we did so excitedly, eager to be out on the slopes again. What's more, night skiing was so much more fun than its daytime counterpart. Sure, fewer runs were open at night, but there was just something about skiing in the dark that added a sense of adventure.
"I cannot wait!" Lee exclaimed as the chair came around, sweeping the three of us off our feet and carrying us up the mountain. "My first time night skiing! This will be so much fun!"
I reached into my pocket to untangle my headphones and plug them into my phone, securing a bud into my far ear so I could listen to music and listen to them at the same time. "You'll see, it's a lot of fun, especially when you're drinking!" As if on cue, Neji cracked open one of his beers and began to drain it as quickly as he could swallow.
"Well done!" Lee cried as he reached for his own. The two shortly finished off their first can and crushed the empty containers down to put them back in their bags. "We shall see how long this lasts!"
The lift deposited us at the top of the mountain, and we slid down the slope to the top of the runs. "All right," I said, looking at the trail signs. "Let's stick with greens for now, until we get warmed up."
"At the rate we're going the warm up will be all we get," Neji said, and I could see his cheeks were already tinged pink. We hadn't even gone down the mountain once yet and he was starting to feel the effects of his drinks.
"I think you mean at the rate you're going, Hyuga." I laughed, though I could feel the buzz settling in nicely over my mind too. "Let's go then! No time to waste!"
I shoved off to get a head start so I could strap my other boot in before they caught up, and when they reached me we were ready to head out. I turned up my music for the ride down and as we picked up speed I could feel the high rush over me again. There was nothing like the wind whipping your face as you carved into the freshly groomed snow with the edge of your board, good tunes in your ears, with your best friends beside you.
Life was good.
I looked over at Lee and Neji, who were keeping pace with me. They had less time on the mountain than I did, and Lee had only ever been a handful of times, but he was a quick learner and good on his feet. Neji had been up with me enough to know how to keep up, even if he got a little out of control sometimes. I could see how they both grinned like a fool as the wind flattened their jackets and pants to the front of their bodies, the backside of the fabric snapping like flags in their wake. Neji's hair flew in the wind, waving wildly behind him in a chaotic dance that looked almost like a trail of smoke coming from underneath his helmet.
Yes, life was good.
We rejoined at the bottom of the mountain and headed for the lift again, breathing hard and trying to rub some life back into numb cheeks and noses.
"I knew I should have brought my bandana out here," I grumbled. "Can't believe I left it back home."
"What are you talking about?!" Lee shouted victoriously. "We will never give in! The cold air just makes us tougher in the end!"
Neji reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. "Chill out there, Rambo," he laughed. "Not everyone is as hardcore as you are." The lift came around again to take us up.
All three of us had a competition to see who could drink the next beer the quickest, which was a mistake for them. I knew how to properly shotgun a beer, so they hadn't even finished half of their can before I crunched my empty one down on my thigh.
"Amateurs," I gloated. "Get on my level!" Lee gaped at me in some sort of reverence as Neji looked at me from Lee's other side, admiration and adoration clear in his eyes.
"You alright there babe?" I asked playfully.
"Just remembering why I love you is all," he replied sweetly even as Lee clenched his fist excitedly, punching the air and exclaiming something about the "passion of youth," or something. It was his new catchphrase, as Neji and I liked to joke.
We turned the opposite way this time to ride down the other side of the mountain, flying down the wide-open runs with reckless abandon. The mountain and its sisters surrounding us seemed to look down on us disapprovingly, shining under the glare of the moon and the stars in the clear night, but we couldn't care less. What more could a person want besides good company and good drinks?
We continued like that for some amount of time; the alcohol took hold in our minds and blended the runs together so they became difficult to distinguish in memory. We finished off the beer in our bags and then skied until the mountain itself was shut down for the night, laughing and jeering and singing our way down like the ridiculous, mismatched trio of blockheads that we were. We burst into laughter when we had to try to convince the lift operator that we hadn't been drinking, and though we succeeded we joked on that ride up that the poor dude definitely wasn't convinced but he wasn't paid enough to care.
I was ridiculously thankful that we rented a condo just steps from the lift, since we were done by the time the runs closed. I don't know how we made it back to the condo in one piece that night with all of our gear, but we did. We stripped clumsily out of our winter coats and warm clothing and flopped onto the couch, reaching for more beer as we did so, draping ourselves over each other with zero regard for personal space. Even Neji, the one who disliked any sort of physical contact with anyone besides me, was lounging across both Lee and I, singing scraps of some song he'd heard on the radio that had gotten stuck in his head.
It was even more of a miracle that all three of us made it to our beds that night; somewhere beyond us turning on the Xbox and drunkenly raging at online players on Call of Duty I couldn't remember anything. Of course, we all woke up feeling like death and subsequently shared the toilet as we all puked our guts up from the hangovers, but then again, what were best friends for?
Yes, life was good.
