Heya. This took much longer to get done than I was hoping it would, and I apologize for the wait, especially right after saying that the story was coming together. xD It still is, at least I think so. I've been busy. But even aside from that, I still need to get better at just writing and thinking about it later. Thinking while I write has always been a surefire way for me to never get anything done when I have the opportunity. But I can't help it!

Anyway, apologies again for the wait. Trust that I haven't abandoned this story. I still love writing it, even if it can be a headache sometimes when I get stuck on something I really want to be written out properly and not end up coming across weirdly. As always, thank you for the click, and enjoy the blooming drama.

Liar x Liar

Much as Hinata wished she could've stayed in Sasuke's house and enjoyed writhing in his clutches for far longer than just the quarter of the day that she did, with an hour and a half between their houses, and with her already on thin ice with her father when it came to coming home at poor times in the evening, she felt safer coming through the gates of the Hyuga Estate property and approaching home with the afternoon only just beginning to wane on her back.

She departed with no small amount of satisfaction, but also a little bit to ponder upon and decide… and a thin thread of curious concern as well. Part of her wanted to think it was nothing, that she was just being unduly paranoid. Sasuke was fine. Whatever was bugging him, he'd surely be strong enough to deal with it, right?

Hinata lightly shook her head. In any case, it probably wasn't her place to worry about him this way. And she realized with a chill of concern as she stepped through the front doors and walked slowly through the house that she wasn't entirely free of her own issues.

"...Neji?"

At the sight of her cousin meandering in the hall where their bedrooms were lined up, Hinata subtly shrugged up her jacket, thankful that it was full enough around the hood to hide the mark on her neck. When Hinata came around, he turned his head to regard her with a squint.

Confusion and disapproval swirled most prominently amidst the storm of emotion in his hard, pale gaze, causing confusion and anxiety to in turn pool in her own. That look reminded her of her father, and it never failed to put her on edge.

"...Hinata, there's something going on with you, and I intend to get to the bottom of it," he said, coming closer to her. "Starting with what was really happening on Thursday."

Her throat tightened, her concern icing over into solid fear, and her hands fidgeting nervously in front of herself as she spoke up.

"What…? I told you already... Where is this coming from? I thought we were done with this."

"I had to be up at the school for a bit of aide work and ran into Sakura," he explained. "I felt like I needed to properly voice my concerns and see that you aren't being cowed."

A crack in the ice. "You… You what? Neji..." Hinata mumbled, her eyebrows rising.

"You weren't doing any cleaning. As far as anyone knew, you were there with Sasuke." Neji scowled. "What is the-"

"Neji, you said… You said you trusted I could take care of myself. You lied to me."

Hinata's voice wavered slightly as she spoke, the tightness in her chest refusing to relax.

Neji squinted with exasperation. "You have the nerve to say something like that after you lied to me first?"

Hinata shook her head. "That was my business, Neji. My business that I assured you that I could handle. That I can handle. That was the truth, and y-you didn't believe me. Why? Why are you doing this? Have you ever believed in me…?"

Neji opened his mouth once more to respond, but found himself at a puzzled loss for words, unable to do much more than just furrow his brows with consternation at Hinata.

It didn't take long for Hinata to be done with the painful standoff. With a shake of her head, she stepped forward to try and move past Neji and escape to her room, but before she could pass him fully, he turned and took a firm hold of her wrist to stop her in her tracks.

"I'm concerned about you, Hinata," he finally said. "It doesn't have anything to do with whether or not I believe you're a capable person. I can't shake this feeling that something's wrong, that you're hiding something that's wrong, and if I can help-"

"I don't need help."

"Why? Tell me that much, at least."

"Why should I, Neji?"

"Because if you don't, I'll have no choice but to let Lord Hiashi know when he returns. You lied to him, too. Directly to his face. Would you rather be having this discussion with him or me? Choose."

"..."

It paralyzed Hinata from head to heart just how quickly and suddenly her awaited Saturday could turn from a good day into a bad one. The rapture she'd been feeling was now about as far from her mind as it could have been, replaced almost wholly with fear and hopeless frustration, bile that had been deep-seated within her for as long as she could remember, now bubbling to the surface at Neji's provocation.

He told her to choose, but she knew she didn't have a choice.

"Sigh… I-I… I wasn't… alone that Thursday. W-When you came by," Hinata muttered, lowering her head. "It's as Sakura said. At that time, I was there with Sasuke."

Hinata felt Neji's grip on her wrist tighten slightly. She knew what he was going to ask next, but knowing the words couldn't fully brace her for hearing them.

"Hinata, what were you two doing that you felt compelled to lie about it so vehemently?"

Hinata looked away, but she couldn't stay silent. She forced her helpless tone forth. "K-Kissing. We were just kissing, that's all. He was- We just, it's…"

It's none of your business.

Neji scowled, another stormy look passing over his eyes. "I was right, wasn't I? About him ordering you to stay behind and taking advantage of you. I should've come in and put a stop to it."

"Neji…"

Leave me alone.

"He thinks he can lead you on however he feels like because he knows you're not the type of person who'll protest him. This can't continue, Hinata, I won't let you be just his puppet on strings-"

"You're wrong!"

Hinata's thoughts spilled forth into her words, and she couldn't stop herself. She yanked her wrist free from Neji's grip as her words continued to flow with shaky but unstoppable passion.

"I'm not a puppet being ordered to do anything! This is why I had to lie to you, Neji! You're overbearing and presumptuous and intense, and I knew, I just knew that you wouldn't be able to handle even a fraction of the truth of what's going on with me! And now I know why. It's because you think I'm hopeless, too. Just like Father does! You're not my father, Neji! Stop trying to be!"

As Hinata's outburst petered out, the sudden numbness of her passion waned, and she felt the tears on her cheeks and the heated tightness in her throat as she gulped. She looked at Neji and the once-more stunned expression on his face, before her heart began to pound anxiously hard and she looked away. Turned away.

"I'm sorry, I… I-I'm sorry."

As quickly as she could, Hinata escaped to her room, shutting and locking the door behind her, leaving Neji standing there in the hall, unsure of how to begin to process this.

The entire rest of that Saturday and almost all of the following Sunday, Hinata spent hiding in her room, terrified beyond description. After she yelled at Neji the way she did, she had no idea whether he actually was still intent on informing her father, though she wouldn't at all be surprised if he did. And so every sound she heard outside her door came with a spike of terror through her heart as she considered the real possibility that it was either a housekeeper or Neji coming to inform her that her father demanded her presence, or Lord Hiashi himself.

Hinata was certain that it was only a matter of time. Obviously, Neji was incapable of letting this go, it seemed. Any minute could've been the minute that all of what she'd made for herself since the beginning of this school year would be forcibly demolished… But the minute never came. Even when Hinata went to dinner both nights, scared out of her wits and almost certain that either Neji or her father would say something to her… neither did. Neji was eerily silent, and Hiashi looked no colder than usual.

The heaviness in the air went unnoticed, or at least, unacknowledged. Neji having little to say and Hinata being cripplingly distressed around her father weren't exactly uncommon behaviors in the Hyuga household. No one seemed the wiser, and while some part of Hinata felt relief when both nights ended without incident, a thorn of anxiety still stuck fast in her heart, even as she drifted off into another tense and uncomfortable night's rest that Sunday evening, not knowing that Neji was lying awake with his back against his bedroom wall, lost in thought, as he had been since the confrontation, about what would truly be the best way for him to proceed...

Sasuke could've easily gone to bed at a decent enough hour that Sunday night for school the next morning. Should have, he knew. But he felt compelled to stay awake, reclining on the couch, half-listening to the noise on tv, until he heard the telltale rumble of a car pulling into the driveway.

Every sense was now trained toward the front door, listening to the quiet, approaching footsteps and the jingle of keys, watching as the door swung open and his father walked in.

Fugaku Uchiha's face had the same cold, hard tilt that Itachi's had, and that Sasuke's was too soft to wear well. But where Itachi always looked weary and done nowadays, Fugaku always looked… distracted. Like his mind was always far away from where he really was. It made sense for what he did, sitting at the head of a major business, maintaining ties with the government and the police that Sasuke was less savvy to.

It made moments like these feel especially icy. Fugaku entered the house silently, his eyes unfocused and his expression firm. He left his long coat on a rack by the door, before moving further into the house, past the couch. Father and son met eyes for a moment as he moved across the living room, but the moment passed immediately, and Fugaku set his eyes forward toward the bedroom hallway again.

"That's all I get, Dad? Just a quick look?" Sasuke scoffed, prompting his father to stop and look over his shoulder.

"I'm certain you weren't expecting a souvenir. What is it you want, then?"

"What was so hard about just sending me a text and telling me yourself when you're going off on some work trip for half a week?"

"Sasuke, I don't remember that being your business, or you being in any sort of circumstance where you might need to know."

"You told Itachi. You could have just as easily mentioned something to me, couldn't you?"

Fugaku sighed and turned back around, beginning to continue walking again. "You were told in the end, weren't you? I fail to see the problem."

"My problem is with being the fucking afterthought of this family," Sasuke growled.

"The afterthought?" Fugaku echoed, pausing again. "You know what you are, Sasuke. You're a boy. A high schooler living the easiest years of his life at a comfortable school, surrounded by other boys and girls who should have every right to look up at you, adore you, and make your life even easier and more enjoyable. You're a prodigy. You're an Uchiha."

Fugaku looked once more over his shoulder at Sasuke. "You're fine," he finished with a dismissive shake of his head, and with that as the last word, he disappeared down the hall toward the master bedroom.

Sasuke balled his fist as a coil of visceral anger began to twist in his gut. He couldn't sit still on the couch, so with a biting 'Tch!' of frustration, he pushed himself up and took a walk, yanking open the glass sliding doors along the side of the house and walking out toward the pool area of the Uchiha household. The cool night air on his face helped marginally, but his frustration would not untangle. As he paced around the perimeter of the pool, he fished his phone from his pocket, his fingers thumping loudly against the touchscreen as he fumbled to get it unlocked.

He scrolled through his pictures, and it didn't take long for him to find the one that he took yesterday afternoon, of Hinata. Naked, kneeling, smiling at him on his bed. Sasuke found his pace slowing a bit, before coming to a stop once more at the sliding doors. As he looked at the picture, remembered yesterday and the Thursday before… the frustration began to wane a bit more. But the clump of emotion that sat like a stone in his stomach still didn't untangle. It just rearranged itself into a different knot.

Hinata awoke that Monday morning with only slightly less unease than she went to bed with. She cracked open her bedroom door and peeked to the left and right, making sure that the hallway was empty before taking her toiletries and school uniform quickly into the bathroom for her brief morning wash-up and returning just as quickly to her room when she was done, to look over herself.

"Hm..."

Hinata tilted her head and frowned at herself in the mirror. She didn't pay too much mind to the little rosy hickey that Sasuke left on her neck on Saturday when she could hide it fairly simply with the kind of clothes that she casually wore anyway. But her school uniform didn't hide it as well, and so she needed to come up with something else. Something that would ideally draw the least amount of attention.

She furrowed her brows and rummaged through her dresser drawers, going through the small amount of makeup that she owned but rarely used. Now was the time, if there ever was one. She just hoped it would be enough. She did what she could to touch up and conceal the rosy spot on her neck, and after checking in the mirror again… decided that it was good enough. She knew it was there, and where it was, but she hoped that she'd hidden it enough that it wasn't noticeable to someone who didn't know and wasn't looking for it.

Hinata came out of her room again, just in time to hear the bathroom door close behind Neji as he went in, and an uncomfortable tingle up her spine pushed her to hurry herself downstairs and be quick with her breakfast before heading out of the estate on her own…

The walk to school and the wait to head inside by her usual tree were just the same as it always was. It wasn't often that Hinata felt more comfortable at school than she did at home, but after the past day and a half of being unhealthily scared, the daily routine of passing through school seemed more like a respite. She yearned for something more normal, more usual, and thought at first that she was on the right track to get just that when she saw Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura coming through the school gates together like they usually did.

"..."

"..."

"Hey! Morning, Hinata!"

All three of them glanced at Hinata, but only Naruto spoke.

Sasuke keeping silent was par for the course, but the look he gave her was not the usual disinterested glance he was wont to give when they were around their classmates. There was something in his eyes that was close to the same sort of subtle gleam that Hinata had come to associate with Sasuke dealing with something that was his business and no one else's. But on the surface, there was something more inquisitive in his look…

Naruto looked the same as always.

Sakura… was fixing Hinata with a look she'd never given her before. Like Sasuke, on the surface, it was a questioning look, but there was something deeper in the gleam behind her eyes that Hinata found uncomfortable. She nodded a greeting to Hinata, but still said nothing.

It was only after they'd passed and the warning bell rang shortly afterwards did it occur to Hinata why those two seemed the way they did. She was supposed to have thought of something to do for the festival by now, at Sasuke's request. And Sakura had talked to Neji. She knew. Hinata had lied to her, too.

The school day flew by at a steady pace, but as hard as she tried, Hinata couldn't seem to concentrate on anything. Not with Sakura's eyes peering over at her about every half-hour, and with the silently frantic feeling that came with struggling to think of something to satisfy the simple request that Sasuke had given her, to think of something to do for the festival that sudden seemed sickeningly imminent, even though it was still a couple of weeks away.

Even at lunch, Hinata broke from her usual pattern of leaving to eat by herself outside, staying in the classroom with her meal for no other reason than to avoid for as long as possible the situation of Sakura following her and being able to talk alone with her. The thought felt ridiculous and wrong in her head, but it stuck fast regardless, and Hinata was uncomfortably imprisoned by it. She would continue to be, until there inevitably came a time that day when there was no choice but to confront the reality that Sakura was going to say something to her about this. And that time came almost as late as it could've: right after school.

As per the routine, when the school day ended, the students were obligated to clean their classrooms and the hallways before separating for their afterschool activities or going home. And as per usual, Hinata was one of the last to leave, lingering thoughtfully and fretfully, with yet still no idea what she was going to say to Sasuke shortly when they all met for the student council meeting. As she meandered toward the classroom door, she paused at the unusual sight of Sakura lingering behind as well. After a moment, the pink-haired girl turned her head and furrowed her brows at Hinata.

"Hey… Can I talk to you for a minute?" she asked.

"Um…" Hinata tilted her head and peered past Sakura into the school hallway. "Shouldn't we really be joining the others and cleaning? I'd… rather not get scolded. Can it wait till after the council meeting?"

"I'd rather not hold you any longer after school than necessary. And they're not going to miss us out there. If they do, I'll take the heat." Sakura moved away from the door frame and a step further into the classroom, and Hinata looked away.

"Alright… What's on your mind, then, Sakura?" Hinata relentingly sighed, beginning to shrink further into herself as she braced herself for the accusation.

"You, Sasuke, and last Thursday. Neji was up here Saturday, and he said that you told him you were alone cleaning, while you told me that you were with him talking about the festival. Based on the implications, I don't think it's a stretch to think now that neither of those stories are true."

"..."

Hinata's lack of a denial made Sakura furrow her brows and cross her arms. "Look, I'm… I'm not grilling you for any details or anything. I'm not even really that mad that you lied about what you were up to. But I have to know. Are you and Sasuke… seeing each other?"

As Hinata processed Sakura's words, she felt confusion begin to settle in, and raised her head to peer curiously at her. "You… have to know? Why do you have to know?"

"Because if you are, then I need to warn you that you're making a mistake," Sakura uttered seriously. "And that it'd be much better for you if you left him alone."

That was a threat. A threat borne of jealousy that would surely, steadily bloom into outright hatred if Hinata said or did the wrong thing right now. It had to be, right?

But Hinata's eyes disagreed with her mind. Sakura didn't look threatening. And she truly didn't seem all that upset. Just… concerned. But…

"W-Why?" Hinata asked. "I mean… I know that you liked him before, but… that can't be what this is about, is it?"

"..."

Sakura looked away from Hinata for a moment, before looking back at her, a different sort of look in her eyes.

"...What if it was?" Sakura took a step closer, and Hinata reflexively took a step back, bumping the backs of her knees into one of the front desks behind her. "What if I told you that Sasuke was mine and that I wouldn't let you have him? That I'd fight you for him?"

"I-I… I…" Hinata mumbled, the rational part of her brain struggling for dear life against the rest of it. "I don't know, Sakura. I-I don't know what I'd do if you were that kind of person. But I don't think you are. Not anymore, anyway. S-So I don't understand why you're trying to scare me."

Sakura's eyes softened again. "Because as ridiculous as it might sound, there's more than a few girls at this school who are still that kind of person. And if any of them found out, instead of me? That's probably how this conversation would be going right now. And if that's enough to scare you, then you should be scared."

She crossed her arms. "Don't take this the wrong way, Hinata, but I don't think you're the type of person who can really stand up to that kind of thing."

Of course…

Sakura's candid words had the exact effect on Hinata that she didn't want them to have. Hinata slowly tilted her head lower, and as Sakura continued to speak, Hinata walked forward.

"So I'm just trying to tell you for your own good and safety. You'll be better off if you- Hinata?"

Sakura blinked as she watched Hinata simply walk past her as if brushing off what she was saying.

"Hey wait, listen to me…!" Sakura said with a furrowed brow as she turned and reached to grab Hinata's wrist, before flinching back as Hinata suddenly and frantically yanked her wrist free from her grip and held her hands in front of her, over her chest.

Facing the door now, with her back to Sakura, Hinata let out a shaky sigh before speaking. "Sakura… I appre- I… I know you're concerned. And you're right. I've been with Sasuke since the beginning of the year. And… you're probably right that if anyone else found out, it might turn into a problem for me. Maybe they'd hold me down and cut all my hair off, too."

"..."

Hinata didn't look back to see if Sakura had a visible response to that. She felt bad for saying it almost immediately, but just like with Neji, the words formed themselves, and even though she wasn't as angry, she was still powerless to stop them from spilling forth.

"But… even if they did try to hurt me to get me to stay away from Sasuke… I wouldn't. I can't."

"Why?" Sakura asked incredulously. "What's making you so insistent on this, Hinata? Of all the boys you could've gotten involved with, why him? What do you even see in Sasuke that's that important to you?"

Hinata turned around to face Sakura again, and with tears in her eyes, gave her pink-haired classmate a gentle, aching, acquiescent little smile. "He believes in me."

Hinata clutched the front of her own uniform blouse firmly. "Nobody looks at me. And when they do, they see a hopeless and useless, weak, timid little rich girl. Or just a pair of huge breasts. I'm nothing but a burden to everyone."

But not you...

"But not to Sasuke," she continued. "He's not burdened by me; he saw something in me that he wanted to bring out and… a-and nurture and keep for his own. And as long as he wants that, I'm going to give it to him."

Hinata wiped her eyes and turned back toward the door again. "We should go and actually help clean the halls. I'll see you at the meeting, Sakura."

With that, Hinata finally left the room and turned the corner, leaving Sakura standing stunned with her brows furrowed in concern and thought at what she'd heard… and what she'd do about it.

Thanks for reading! I think this is about as good as I could've made it, but I still feel like this chapter might've been a little... 'lumpy' in some places. I dunno if you can tell, but I enjoy writing dialogue and especially the interspersions of description and character interactions between lines of dialogue. It's where I personally feel like my writing comes out best.

On the flipside of that, dumping a block of what I call 'here's what happened next' text, especially after getting done with some significant dialogue, feels a little rougher to navigate. :P I try my best to do it with finesse when I have to do it, and just hope it comes across well!

Overall, though, I think this came out well enough. And I hope no one minds me opening up my brain a bit in these after-chapter author notes. Me analyzing myself in bold text is probably not as fun to read as the story above it, but I just like sharing a little bit of my author-y thoughts once I'm winding down from a finished chapter.

Till next time!