Aritee: Hehe thank you! Hope you like this last chapter, too :)
Tenten disclosed to Lee and Gai that she and Neji were getting a little sugar now and again, casually, a couple months after it became a regular occurrence. Neji was present at the team meeting, but he had chosen to emulate the rigid characteristics of a stone Buddha that day and was therefore no help. Tenten was pretty sure he had PTSD.
They had felt trepidation – not because Gai or Lee were prudes, but because Gai was too sex-friendly and Lee was too supportive. It wasn't strange for shinobi to become sexually active at a young age, and they were instructed rigorously on the potential consequences.
Tenten remembered Lee's ears bleeding the first time Gai had told them about the mechanics of sex, back when they were really still kids. When teammates had casual relations, they disclosed it to the rest of the team, set boundaries, and that was it. Sex was often as mechanical as weapons maintenance. You were just taking care of another tool in your arsenal.
Of course, for Tenten and Neji, it was much more personal.
Tenten loved Neji, and she secretly relished the fact that he chose her. It was fun, most times. She tried to ignore the way her heart hurt whenever he left afterward.
Neji regarded it as training. He trained with Tenten because they worked well together and they helped each other get stronger. He trained with her because he respected her, and it turned out that he was also ridiculously attracted to her. He left every night because he was afraid their relationship would surpass that of teammates, that their activities might surpass mere training.
In the present, Gai quizzed her for ten minutes on correct contraception methods, consent, etc., and was about to offer tips and advice when Neji began to yell, his hands over his ears. He yelled wordlessly, to drown out thought and sound and bring about the end of the world, if possible. The veins in his forehead were popping out, and he wasn't using the Byakugan.
Yup. Definitely PTSD.
"I acknowledge and respect your boundaries, Neji," Gai said cautiously once Neji stopped yelling. (Tsunade had made him take a seminar.) "However, I am more experienced in this, and just as in your careers as ninja, I can help ease you through the-."
"No," Tenten said firmly, and everyone looked at her.
"No?" repeated Gai tremulously.
Tenten verbally abused him and Lee on an hourly basis, but she rarely put her foot down. She looked him straight in the eyes like she was training a bad dog.
"No," she repeated firmly, and he sat back down looking a little disappointed.
Turned out Lee was not quite as supportive as Tenten had expected.
"What does this mean for our teamwork?" Lee asked, raising his hand like he were still a genin, or even a student.
"What do you mean?" Neji asked, surprised into speech by the rational question.
"I mean, what does this mean for our teamwork? Will the two of you feel more amorous toward one another and therefore be more inclined to protect one another? How will this affect your relationship and the team dynamic? Is it still permissible that Gai-sensei and I hug you, Tenten, touch your shoulder, your hand? Are you two in a romantic relationship as well?" Lee listed off, his face curiously blank.
Now it was Tenten's turn to be shocked.
What the shit, Lee?
Lee lived so vicariously in the moment that when a civilian girl he'd saved on a mission had given him ample reason to believe she wanted to get it on, he went for it. That was half a year ago, and Tenten couldn't say for sure that there hadn't been others. Neji had drunk himself into a stupor when he found out – he just couldn't wrap his mind around it. Gai had been way too elated. The sheer audacity of it all.
Neji was in the process of formally answering all of Lee's questions and complaints when Tenten's incredulous anger thawed the shock of Lee's betrayal.
"You little hypocrite dog, you," she said with venom, interrupting Neji's explanation that their team dynamic would not deteriorate but would rather flourish with this new development.
"Tenten," Neji said warningly.
"I do not wish to argue, Tenten," Lee said, still calm as a cucumber. "I merely wish to set the facts straight."
"Why the hell are you talking like him?!" Tenten shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at Neji.
"Hey," he said in protest, but no one paid any attention. Gai watched on gravely – he would intervene if Tenten acted on her desire to beat Lee's brains out, but barring that, this was a conflict that had to be played out.
"Why? Would that make you sleep with me?" Lee asked.
"Why the shit would you even ask that?" Tenten demanded, now too dumbfounded to even be angry. "You tell me every day that I should do yoga so that I'll be more elegant and feminine, that I should stop cussing, that I'm undisciplined – I wasn't ever under the impression that you wanted to sleep with me!"
"And Neji? Did he give you that impression?" Lee countered.
"Hey," Neji said, his voice a temperature they hadn't heard in a while. The air between the team turned frosty. "Knock it off."
"Kids, why don't we use I-words?" Gai suggested lightly. "Tenten?"
Lee sat calmly, looking up at Tenten, who had stood up in her agitated state. His legs were crossed, for fuck's sake.
"I don't know what the shit has you like this, Lee, but you're freaking me the hell out, and I would appreciate if you told me why the fuck you're challenging me on this. Me, Lee! I thought you'd be carrying me across the yard yelling about how proud you were," Tenten said in a low voice, sitting down.
Gai nodded – that was as good as it got with Tenten when she was agitated.
"I just can't believe you would endanger our team for this… stint," Lee said, mildly accusatory. "And to some degree, I can't believe that you'd decide to go for it with Neji."
"Clarify that last sentence," Neji said colorlessly.
"Neji," Lee said, addressing him now in that same mild-mannered voice, "you are a good teammate and a good friend. You consistently have everyone's backs. However, you are not a great best friend, which is what Tenten and I are to one another. You were cruel to us when we were younger, and though we have all moved on from such juvenile injustices, I still can't wrap my head around the fact Tenten would deign to sleep with you, much less love you."
(Gai briefly regretted not bringing popcorn to this meeting. Ah, to be young again!)
"Oh, you purple-colored bastard, you," Tenten whispered at him, shaking her head in disbelief.
"Tenten, clarify Lee's last statement," Neji instructed, getting up to stop her from mangling Lee. Gai was also half-standing, but he sat back down when he saw Neji had it under control.
"Clarify your ass," Tenten sobbed, already running away. Neji glared frustratedly at Lee, who sat there swinging his crossed leg and returning Neji's gaze calmly.
"Well?" Neji growled at him.
"Oh no, that's your job now," Lee informed him coolly, and Neji set off after Tenten, muttering murder under his breath.
Gai patted Lee's back gently.
"Wanna go run laps around the village?" he offered.
"Oh yes, definitely," Lee said immediately, jumping to his feet.
When Neji found Tenten in the woods, she was in a heap on the ground, inconsolable and consumed with a distinctly homicidal rage. He shook his shoulder gently, then more insistently.
"No, Neji, I will not clarify," she sobbed, and buried her head back in her arms.
"Take your time," Neji said patiently. (He also attended seminars, according to the Hokage's orders and the private desire of one Hyuga Hiashi.)
"What the shit is wrong with him?" Tenten demanded of no one, wiped her face, and sat up.
"It was very disconcerting to see Lee act like that," Neji said soothingly. "As disconcerting as it would have been if, say, I had worn spandex and a bowl cut."
Tenten snorted.
"Would you clarify what Lee meant, though?" Neji asked, frowning slightly.
"I, yes, I will," Tenten said, sitting up a little straighter and clearing her throat. She hoped he would disregard that one of her buns was coming loose and she was dirty and a little snotty at the moment.
"I am in love with you," she said clearly and in a business-like manner, the way she and Neji usually took care of awkward or tedious emotions. "I have been in love with you since I was 13 years old, on and off, but I have kept these emotions separate, apart from our relationship. I swear to you I did not suggest the sexual relationship because of my amorous feelings toward you. I did it because I trust you with my body, which is a little different from the way I would trust Lee."
Neji's eyes rose and the corners of his lips lifted slightly. He might as well have heehawed in her face.
"What's so funny," she demanded, furrowing her brows.
"Nothing – it's just that, Tenten, it's not only Lee. You, too. You talk like me, too. We're all little sociopaths," Neji laughed.
Tenten laughed, too. He was right. For all Gai's passionate rants and activities, Team Gai worked in a bloodless, efficient manner that had at some point adopted Neji's emotionless diction to function.
Lee wasn't being an asshole. He was simply setting boundaries. Tenten briefly remembered all the times she'd screamed the word at him.
"God, I should find Lee and apologize," she breathed, but Neji shook his head slightly.
"You still have business here with me," he declared. Though Tenten didn't know it, he was about to cross a line, a line he had drawn in the sand.
She blinked.
"I do?"
"Tenten, you cannot just confess your love for me and up and at 'em," Neji said impatiently. "You cannot love someone and not imagine a future with them."
"What would you know, bird boy?" Tenten retorted, before grumbling a, "Sorry. Continue."
"This is a matter of the heart, so I will use Gai's blasted I-speech," Neji declared, clearing his throat in preparation. Tenten almost giggled at the absurdity of it all. Neji gave her a look to settle down.
"I feel," he began slowly, unused to the words, "that you are my closest female friend, and am very flattered that you think so highly of me."
"But," Tenten supplied. She refused to be let down without seeing it coming.
"Listen to the end," Neji said, swatting at her. "I feel that I don't have quite the long history of being in love with you as you have with me, but I am certain that I feel love for you."
"But," Tenten said again. Her heart was a band drum line in her chest. Would he get on with it?
"Incorrigible," Neji breathed, and Tenten's heart just about stopped.
"There is no but, Tenten. I don't think that I'm in love with you, but I feel very open to the possibility of it happening. Perhaps it's already happened… I am very fond of you," he finished, his large hand reaching out to rest tentatively on the side of her face. His eyebrows were screwed together and his face was slowly bleeding red from the neck up.
Tenten could not believe it.
"Oh my God, Hyuga Neji, you have it bad," Tenten said disbelievingly, rising slowly to her feet and letting Neji's hand fall.
"I-," Neji protested.
"Oh my God, Hyuga Neji, you have got the hots for little old Tenten bad!" she shouted, getting up to do a terrible little victory dance. "You're whipped, son!"
Was she trying to seduce him or do the macarena?
"You should do more yoga," Neji said in his dead voice.
Tenten shrieked out in laughter and threw her arms around his neck, falling into his lap. She kissed him, still giggling against his lips, and he was laughing, too. She was acting so ridiculously he couldn't say for sure that she was sane, but her delight was infectious.
"Hey, look, a bird!" she said suddenly, looking over Neji's head.
"Where-," Neji started, and then angled his head slightly to the left.
"Ah. A gray dove."
In his pocket were exactly seven paper cranes.
Lee was well-versed in the ways of love. He had been since a very early age.
When Tenten first threw him on his back with that basic judo move when they were 8, he knew she was his first love. He followed her everywhere, to learn what it was she knew, to discover the world she saw.
And then she picked her nose and hit a cricket two yards away with her booger, and he knew that that was not the woman he was going to marry, so help him God.
He had a girlfriend when he was 10. She was a civilian. She had warm black eyes and a slight snaggletooth. They held hands on their second date and Lee's hand was so sticky that she wiped her hand on his clothes and never even looked back as she left.
When he was 13, he fell in love with Haruno Sakura. She was beautiful, strong, resourceful, and graceful. While Naruto and Sasuke were gone, Sakura was so lonely she was actually open to the idea of dating Lee. Lee was nice. He respected women (Tenten had beat that into him very early on in their friendship, though he was already kind to just about everyone.) They went out on a couple dates, and Lee found that she was as reserved as he was open.
Rather than get on romantically, Lee found that a truer, inner Sakura existed who was kind and good and driven, yes, but also highly violent and a little manic, and befriended her. Whenever Sakura cried about Sasuke, he was there to make her smile again – not with romantic interest, but with the amicable yet slightly detached air of a man who had to hightail it if she decided to smash the building. Again.
It was like seeing the cricket pinned down by the booger again.
(He was definitely the cricket in this scenario.)
Lee explored his sexuality, which terrified Neji and repulsed Tenten into the stone age. He found he liked it, but he found that he truly was a romantic at heart.
They thought he was the clueless one.
He was aware of Tenten's feelings for Neji since she'd told him, but also because he was observant. Tenten treated Neji just about the same as she did Lee when they were on mission duty or during training, but during the little breaks in between, her eyes would linger a little shyly on Neji.
A couple weeks before their second Chunin exam, Lee noticed that Neji's demeanor toward Tenten had changed. Despite his professionalism, he was highly protective of Tenten, especially on missions, and once or twice that had cropped up as a problem as Lee was caught off guard by enemies whose chakra he could not sense for the life of him.
When Tenten announced that they were sleeping together, Lee guessed the truth. He hadn't meant to press all of Tenten's buttons, but when she exploded he went for it, a little too hard. It wasn't his place to disclose Tenten's long harbored secret or force them together into a romantic relationship somehow, but they were both so clueless that Lee almost didn't care. And it ended up alright, anyway.
They eloped at 18 and enjoyed one year of freedom before Hyuga Hiashi died and as a massive fuck you to the clan, named Neji his heir, threatening to sign a deal with Kumogakure which would provide access to Hyuga bodies. Of course, he was the only one who had mastered the prerequisite techniques necessary to take over as head of the clan, as well as the necessary ceremonies that Hiashi had trained him in secret.
Despite varied threats, Neji took his place as Clan head (leaving Hinata and Hanabi to do whatever the fuck they wanted, which pleased them just fine), and worked to abolish the caste system within the clan. If the secret of the Byakugan was so important it should be concealed in the case of death, they should all have a seal that would do so post-mortem. Tenten could oversee it, in fact. She was a fuinjutsu specialist.
(Of course, the main family despised this idea, and the seals were destroyed altogether. Exactly as the couple had planned.)
Neji wouldn't have worked so hard to abolish the social strata had Tenten not been pregnant with twins by the time they were 20. Their kids were not coming out of the womb to be branded inferior with their first breath, they both agreed. When the clan sent assassins for an 8-month pregnant Tenten, she calmly knocked them out cold with the scalding hot frying pan she was using to prepare lunch for Lee, who was to visit, and sealed them in her scroll.
Lee brought takeout.
Neji used the assassins to further pressure the clan to abolish the hierarchy, and to everyone's surprise, it worked. Neji actually cried.
A thousand years of toxic tradition – gone.
There was social chaos, another attempt at assassination, this time on the newborn twins, at which both Tenten and Neji went stark raving mad, and a dissolution of a great many clan institutions. It took nearly a decade and a war for them to make any sort of coherent sense of the clan. Lee and Gai, of all people, kept the couple sane. And of course, Lee's wife.
But that was another story, for another time.
Thank you for reading up till now!
Some of Neji and Tenten's personality is different from canon, but I think that you can only maintain so much sanity when you have to deal with Gai and Lee all the time. Also, a little Lee epilogue, because he can't always be as ridiculous as he's depicted all the time, right?
I might start a drabbles fic after this, so let me know your favorite pairings and friendships, and I'll see what ridiculous situations I can come up for them :)