So, after a short Shippuden marathon thanks to new access to Hulu Plus, I'm back in a Naruto kick. Enjoy.

As always, Naruto belongs to Kishimoto.

It had been too long. Much too long. It felt like it had been months since Neji last bathed, and even if all he had was a drought-ridden pond in the middle of a not nearly secluded enough field, he was going to get clean. Something about desert sand made a week's travel itch like he'd been stuck in a sandstorm the entire trip. Maybe it was Lee's insistence in racing Neji whether Neji participated or not, which usually left him running behind his so-called rival and getting a double spray of sand in his clothes. He could outrun Lee if he wanted, but then he'd be stuck up with Lee and Gai rather than Tenten, and Neji always chose the sane member of their team for long journeys.

So that brought him to a pond that luckily was deep enough to give him a modicum of modesty should anyone pass too close, though not much more. It was more than enough to scrub the dust and debris from his body and wash out his hair. The downfall of having his hair grown out again was maintaining it, but Neji allowed himself this little bit of vanity. Cold, wet hair also felt very nice against his forehead as of late. Hinata's attempts at understanding the seal were few and far between, but the headaches lingered for days afterwards, and Neji would be lying if he said he wasn't happy for the extended mission away.

Slipping out of the safety of the water, Neji quickly shook off and pulled on his shorts. He didn't have a proper towel to dry off, just a small rag he kept in his bag, so he made his way back to the camp to air dry in front of the fire. If he was lucky, Gai and Lee would still be doing their evening training and he would have a while more of quiet before they returned.

"Feeling better after your bath, Hyuuga-sama?" Tenten teased from her spot in front of the fire. Gai and Lee were nowhere in sight.

"I feel clean," Neji replied blandly, refusing to take her bait. It wasn't the first time she'd teased him for his cleanliness habits. So what if he was accustomed to a certain amount of propriety living in the main house; he didn't like to itch. After a moment or two of searching through his bag, Neji sighed and turned back to his teammate. "Where's my brush?"

Whistling, Tenten tended to her kunai as if he'd said nothing.

"Tenten."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Tenten continued to deny, though the smile curling her lips betrayed her.

Neji sighed. "Don't make me use byakugan."

"Oh, you're no fun," Tenten said, reaching into her bag and retrieving his brush. "I was just curious if your hair could actually look bad. Does Hinata make you special shampoo or something?"

Neji quirked his brow up. "Why would Hinata make my shampoo?"

"She makes all your other creams."

Neji shrugged; that was true. Carefully, Neji hung his wet hair over the fire as he brushed it out. The night wasn't too cold, but the wind and water together made his skin prickle with goose bumps. Dry hair, especially as long as his, was necessary to warm up.

"Seriously, how do you have hair that nice? I brush mine and it blows up all around my head."

"Is that why you always wear the buns?" Neji laughed. Imaging Tenten with a bushel of frizzed out hair was both difficult and fun.

"It's not pretty."

"That's hard to believe," Neji chuckled, though he'd love to see the attempt.

"Well, we can't all afford fancy Hyuuga shampoo to make our hair silky and shiny." Tenten came up behind him and ran her fingers through the dark hair hanging over the fire.

Neji smiled. Every time she teased him about his hair, it always turned into a pretext to her playing with it, which Neji didn't discourage. He enjoyed the feeling of her hands in his hair and the way her fingertips grazed his bare skin on their way down. Not that he'd admit it aloud or dare let anyone, especially Gai or Lee, see such an intimate encounter. He'd never hear the end of youth and whatnot. It wasn't as if they were flirting; any sane people teamed with Gai and Lee would end up becoming close.

A thought struck him as Tenten, who'd procured the brush from him, finished getting the knots out of the ends. After he put the brush back in his bag, Neji grabbed the last of his travel shampoo. Maybe it was time to turn the tables on her.

"So, if it's all about the shampoo, if I give you 'Hyuuga' shampoo, you'll wear your hair down?" he asked, tossing her the shampoo.

Tenten laughed with that sweet bird chirp of hers and let the bottle roll around in her hands. "Unlike you, I haven't figured out how to fight with a glorious mane flowing around behind me."

"Glorious mane?"

Tenten shook her head. "Sorry, it's hard to keep Gai and Lee from rubbing off on long missions."

She wasn't looking at him, Neji realized. Tenten only did that when she didn't want him reading into her expression too much. "You're dodging the question. Are you embarrassed about your hair?"

"No," she snapped at a higher pitch than normal, which made his ears ring a little.

"Then you'll wear it down?"

He watched her carefully for a hint to her hesitation. The embarrassment showed in the way her gaze found anything but him. Frustration in the slight crinkling of her lips. Then came the defiance: a deep huff that brought the fight back to her countenance.

"Fine. After we get back to the village, and I get a real shower, I'll wear my hair down. Once. You better not miss it."

"I won't."

Even though he'd just spent the last couple weeks with his team, Neji was more than ready to sneak out again. Despite being four months away from her due date, Naomi had already been put on bed rest, and an aggravated, pregnant kunoichi who couldn't do anything was a dangerous person to be around. Neji would leave that to his father and the house servants. There were perks to being in the main house. He would be more worried for his mother and new brother or sister, except Yumi appeared far too amused by Naomi's plight. If the head healer in the clan wasn't worried, he supposed it was just a part of pregnancy.

For now, he was pleased to be away from the house again and heading off to meet his team. Today was a treat, too; Tenten was supposed to wear her hair down. It was silly, of course, but in all the years they'd been working together, Neji honestly couldn't think of a single time he'd seen it down. A couple of times it came partway undone in the heat of battle, but that wasn't the same, and now he was genuinely curious. Hinata was looking different now that her hair was longer. What would Tenten look like without her buns?

When he arrived at the training field, Lee and Gai were already there huddled around a tree. Neji couldn't see beyond with their greed-clad bodies blocking his view, but an extra pair of feet hinted that it was probably Tenten they surrounded. Neji smirked. She must have kept her word.

He called out to them and Lee turned enough for him to see the girl beyond, and the sight erased the smile from his face. Her hair was up. More specifically, half her hair was up and the other was balled into her hand waiting to be tied. For a second her eyes met him then flashed to the ground.

"Neji, you missed it! Tenten came with her hair down. I almost didn't recognize her! She was really pretty." Lee paused then hastily spun back to Tenten, shaking his hands in the air furiously. "Not that you're not pretty with it up."

"I wouldn't know," Neji muttered loud enough to be heard by the group. "I've never seen it down."

"Well, you should have been here on time then," Tenten said, still not meeting his gaze.

Gai cut off any retort with a dramatic sweep of his arms. "Indeed, our Tenten is blossoming with youth! A blooming rose—"

"With thorns as sharp," Neji finished.

He didn't know why he was angry. Maybe not angry, but perturbed. Or frustrated, perhaps. No, betrayed. That was a good word. He was the one who gave her the shampoo and she made him the promise. Not Lee or Gai. Yet he's the only one who missed out, because he was a few minutes late.

Neji grabbed Lee by the arm and dragged him out into the training area. He needed to hit something. Hard.

It didn't take long for Gai to call practice off for the day. Lee turned into a suffering blog of inflamed muscles and joints shortly after their spar began, and Gai stepped in to drag the poor boy away. Neji winced as he rotated his wrist clockwise. Hurting yourself while using jyuuken, the gentle fist, was a sure sign of overdoing it.

"Do you want to stay a bit more?" Tenten asked, her voice softer than usual. "My dad made me a few new weapons I'd like to try out."

Neji didn't bother looking at her. "No, I'll head home and see if Hinata feels like sparring." And have Yumi heal his hand; who knew Lee could be so boney.

Though he refused to see her, Neji could hear her agitation in her pitch, which turned a bit screechy considering her normal voice. "Well, I feel sorry for her. Try not to send her to the hospital, too, Hyuuga-sama."

Refusing to take her bait, Neji left the training field without another word. His hands remained clenched at his sides the entire way home despite the pain tightening the muscles caused. Her aggravation just made him angrier. Why should she be annoyed when he was the one slighted? Tenten was at fault.

For once Neji wished he had Gai's ignorance of the world and could scream out loud in the middle of the street. It wasn't unheard of for Tenten and him to argue, but he never remembered it being this frustrating before.

A loud whistle sounded from the gate as Neji approached the compound. "Someone's not very happy today," Osamu said with a snide smile.

"I'm not in the mood," Neji snapped back, trying desperately to keep his eyes low and let nothing out the twins could read. The last thing he needed was them prattling on about his feelings.

The twins shared a look that made Neji's stomach drop, then, in unison, they said, "Girl problems."

Neji wanted to keep going and just ignore them, but if he didn't address it directly, those two would go blabbing on to Hinata or worse, his mother, about a non-existent relationship. "In order to have girl problems, I would first need a girl, which I don't have nor care about right now."

Isamu and Osamu scoffed in perfect time. "We're pretty sure you both have and care," Isamu remarked.

Neji sighed. "No, I don't."

Osamu's eyes widened slightly, not in the over-exaggeration that usually accompanied his teasing. "Wow, I haven't seen denial that strong since you, Otouto."

Isamu glared but let it pass. "Do you think all Hyuuga men have are dense to their own emotions, or does it run in our family?"

A steady headache began throbbing behind Neji's eyes. "I said I'm not in the mood today, so what are you talking about?"

Isamu raised a skeptical brow. "You're honestly going to tell us you don't like Tenten."

Why did people always assume that a guy and a girl who are close automatically made them interested in each other? It was getting harder to resist the urge to take out his remaining, and renewed, frustrations out on the two of them. "I like Tenten, but I am not romantically interested in her. You team up with Gai and Lee for several years and you'll cling to the only sane person nearby, too."

Isamu rolled his eyes. "It's more than that."

"Pray tell, how?" Neji asked in his exasperation, and immediately regretted giving them an opening.

The twins faces lit up and Osamu waved off the honor of giving an answer to his brother. Isamu leaned forward and draped his arms over Neji's shoulders, which Neji shook off before edging out of arms reach. Isamu's smile widened.

"You don't like people touching you, but you let Tenten touch you, rather a lot," Isamu explained as if Neji was a child trying to solve a problem. "The only other people you let touch you that much are Aunt Naomi and Hinata-sama."

"So does that mean I'm also in love with my mother and sister?" Neji asked.

In truth, the observation was a bit unnerving. Isamu wasn't wrong that Neji preferred to avoid contact with anyone but those closest to him. It was one of the reasons he couldn't stand Gai and Lee's obsessive need for male bonding; it required far too much touching and hugging. Yet, he did let Tenten hug him. They weren't romantic, just side hugs or one-arm congratulations. He never stopped her from running her fingers through his hair, though. That was something only she did. But that didn't make it romantic, just . . . playful. Neji was playful when he wanted to be.

Isamu shrugged and leaned back against the gate wall again. "You're turn, Aniki."

"It's always up to me," Osamu bemoaned with a heavy sigh. Then, in a calm, even voice, he asked, "Why were you upset when you got here?"

Why was he upset? That had a simple answer: Tenten broke her promise. So, why did he hesitate to tell them that? The next question would be what was the promise, and somehow saying that she put her hair up felt too tedious to be given voice. He shouldn't have been so worked up about a little thing like that, but he was. Not because she broke her promise, but because she specifically made sure he didn't get to see and he didn't know why. Weren't they more comfortable with each other than that?

"It sucks to be told how you feel, doesn't it?" Isamu asked, drawing Neji out of his thoughts. "Aniki's good at it."

"I'm going for a walk." Neji turned around and headed back out of the compound. He needed time to think without people watching him, especially ones as perceptive as those two.

For a while Neji wandered the village, thinking over how he and Tenten have changed over the years. There were so many things they did now that he wouldn't have dreamed possible that first day sitting in a balcony of the academy. Back then the idea that she would be one of his closest friends and he'd trust her with his life would have been preposterous, but that was all part of being in a team.

That's where it started. He needed her to be the calm against Lee and Gai's exuberance. If it had been anyone else on his team in her place, he would have gone crazy long ago. But needing her in the team didn't explain why he felt betrayed from something as miniscule as Tenten wearing her hair down. Had need really become want? Could it happen that casually?

When Neji imagined romantic love it was the subtle touches of his parents or the embarrassed puppy love Hinata had for Naruto. He and Tenten had none of that, yet he'd wanted to be the one to see her. In fact, he'd wanted to be the only one to see her. He wanted it to be between them, because he was most content when they were alone. Was that all it took to be more than friends?

Neji found himself back at the training field, not certain if he hoped Tenten was still there or not. While still out of sight, he activated byakugan to spy ahead. A thoroughly impaled training post had taken the brunt of Tenten's frustrations, it seemed. Senbon, shuriken, kunai, multiple swords, a couple sai, and one large halberd stuck out from all angles around the post, with the halberd a good halfway through. She must have been furious to get that much depth.

The young woman herself sat bent over the small summoning scroll that housed the majority of her arsenal. She'd talked about getting a larger one to expand her collection, since the small ones could only summon up to medium-sized weaponry. He seen her plenty of times through byakugan during training, but he avoided reading into her beyond the fight as much as possible. He tended to end up with blades somewhere in his body when he did that. Now, he wanted to see what she hid that morning each time she turned away from him. Were the twins right, and, if so, was their argument because she felt the same as him?

She wasn't concentrating on the scroll, that much was obvious. From afar her attention appeared clear, but with byakugan he could see the way her eyes drifted aimlessly, moving but not looking. She was thinking about the past, probably that morning given the tension in her jaw and the way her fingers clenched slightly. It wasn't enough to make a fist, so her fury must have abated, but the anxiety remained. Confusion knit her brow together, which made sense. What didn't was a strange combination of emotions that Neji had difficulty understanding: regret and relief.

Regret seemed simple enough; as angry as he was at the time, Neji regretted fighting with her over something so stupid. She might have regretted starting it at all by not letting him see, but then why relief? Relief over what? That he was gone and the fight was over? No, there was something more that he couldn't see, not without talking to her and seeing her reactions.

Whether or not the twins were correct, Neji knew that he shouldn't have gotten so upset and he wanted to make it right. Something felt very wrong being at odds with his favored teammate. Deactivating byakugan, Neji made his way to the training field, making sure to make plenty of noise so as not to appear like he was lurking around.

Tenten looked up at the sound, only to turn away again. "What do you want?"

Neji shoved his hands in his pockets and his pride down his throat. "I came to apologize. I'm sorry."

The opposition relaxed from her expression as she took in his words, and, after a moment, her head edged back toward him a little. "I guess I'm sorry, too."

He sat down in front of her scroll and her eyes dropped to the ground, leaving an awkward silence in the air separating them. Neji knew that asking the next question could ruin their temporary truce, but it was the only way to find out the truth. "Can I ask why?"

Tenten fidgeted with the grass beneath her to try and quell the nervousness Neji could see without byakugan. "Maybe there's things I don't want you to see."

"I don't understand." He was going to get a migraine from all the things confusing him today.

"Neither do I, and I'd like to figure it out before you go off telling me what I feel!" She grabbed the scroll in front of her and fell back into the grass, draping the scroll over her face so he couldn't see.

In the back of his mind, Neji heard Isamu's teasing from earlier and suddenly had a new appreciation for what he put his teammates through. There were only a few people who could read him well enough to see what he didn't want, and he didn't spend nearly as much time with them as Tenten did with him. He did his best not to pry, but some things were inevitable.

Then it hit him like a punch from Gai. It was inevitable. What she didn't want him to see, he would have seen. That was why she put her hair back up. Not many emotions could come out from an act as simple as leaving her hair down. It had to be attraction. If he'd seen that, even if she didn't fully understand her own emotions, their relationship would have changed.

Neji lifted the loose end of the scroll enough to see the bottom of Tenten's face. "Better be careful or I'll be calling you porcupine."

For the first time all day, a smile tweaked the corners of her lips only to fall into a sigh. "I hate this. Can't we just forget everything and go back to the way things were?"

The way things were . . . that sounded good.

Pulling the scroll the rest of the way from her face, Neji smirked. "I guess even a genius can forget one thing."

There it was again. Relief. This time he understood, because he felt it too. He needed his teammate. He didn't need a girlfriend. If that changed one day, so be it. Today, it was enough to get back to normal.

"Come on," Neji said, grabbing her hand to help her up. "Didn't you have new weapons to test out?"

Tenten offered a sheepish grin. "I may need help getting them out of the training post."

Neji chuckled. "What are teammates for?"