When they first met

Chapter 6: When Shikamaru met Kankuro

June 2017

Shikamaru would never forget the first time he met Kankuro as one of the worst memories of his life. Even his lazyass personality would have worked hard and fast at digging the deepest hole known to man so he could crawl in it.

And don't get the wrong impression that Kankuro was to blame for this frantic panic. No.

Like most troublesome drama in his life, this was because of Neji.

Well, no. By far, most of the troublesome drama in his life was owed to his -completely platonic, thank God!- best friend, Ino. But Neji was a close runner-up, and that was saying something for anyone that knew Ino.

But Neji was solely why every time he thought back on his first encounter with his brother-in-law, he winced and cringed.

"W-what?" Tenten stuttered and her eye contact with Neji broke as she looked at the waiter, startled, wondering if he just read her thoughts. "What did you say?"

"That the tables have turned." He repeated unsurely. "You know to place your table as we talked about earlier, we had to rotate a few tables. It's a little pun." He chuckled.

"Ah," Tenten nodded, realizing Neji was nowhere to be seen anymore, she was still disturbed, but she put on a smile. "Thank you!"

This was Temari's special moment and she knew her boyfriend had been actively looking at her, trying to decipher her reaction at seeing Neji again. Thus, she pushed the unexpected encounter out of her mind and focused on the event at hand.

She turned to Shikamaru as they made their way, following the waiter. "Now, I want to know all about your first meeting, but told through your lenses."

Shikamaru groaned and she laughed.

Maybe it was because his wife was a lawyer; still, whenever revisiting this memory, Shikamaru wants it noted on every possible record that he had tried his best to impede the cataclysmic encounter between Neji and Tenten.

But as always, when it concerned those two, the universe was not on his side. Or maybe, as he would come to think of it later, maybe too much on their side. Shikamaru didn't know what they did in their previous lives, what kind of connexion they had, but the universe seemed very intent on making sure they found their way back to each other.

That day, he remembers precisely how every little thing that could have gone wrong went horribly wrong. Starting from his phone that didn't charge because it wasn't appropriately plugged. He had missed his 17 alarms and overslept. His date was in a half-hour!

Then it was the water being cut mid-shower while he was covered in soap.

Living in a frat house with the other guys, he had been thoroughly mocked by Naruto and Kiba when he came down covered in foam, a towel tied around his waist. They were all sitting at the table eating their breakfast and if the other two idiots' roars of laughter weren't bad enough, Sasuke had spit back his mouthful of cereal, and Neji raised his usual condescending brow at him.

"What do I do now," Shikamaru groaned. "I have a date in an hour."

Neji smiled while taking a sip of his coffee. "Well, I have an idea."

Shikamaru groaned again, raising his eyes to the ceiling. He hated it when Neji smiled. It never meant anything positive. Actually, he couldn't even think of anything scarier than Neji smiling. Except maybe Sasuke smiling.

"You're not going to like it," Neji said with amusement in his voice.

Of course, I'm not going to like it. Shikamaru thought exasperated. Since when did his friends truly ease his life and not make it more difficult?

"But it's going to be a quick solution to your problem." The Hyuga assured, smirking.

Shikamaru looked at the clock. He had fifteen minutes left.

"Fine." He gritted.

"NO! NOT FINE!" Shikamaru yelled over the icy cold water splashing against his body while Neji was hosing him down in the garden to the hilarity of Naruto, Kiba and a few other frat bros.

With the cut, the only water left was from the reservoir in the garden.

"We could have used the water bottles stocked in the basement." Sasuke murmured to Neji. He was the only one next to the long-haired man, calmly sipping his orange juice.

Neji shrugged, continuing to spray his friend. "Turn around." He shouted.

"Just admit, you thought about it, but you wanted to have some fun." The Uchiha exchanged a glance with the Hyuga.

Neji smirked.

"That's what I thought." The onyx-eyed man smirked back.

And obviously, Shikamaru's car had to break down just after he ran down the stairs, still buttoning the only clean shirt left he had since he completely forgot about his laundry. It was one his mother brought him a year ago and it had little pineapples on it.

Shikamaru groaned at the successive events that made him believe this day was cursed. He was hitting his head against the driving wheel, trying to think of a few solutions.

His phone was still left with no battery, so he couldn't even order an Uber. His car was not working. The taxi telephone line he called told him he couldn't expect a taxi in less than 30 minutes because of overwhelming demand.

Undoubtedly, the universe was against him.

His head was still pressed against the wheel when he heard the sound of someone tapping his window.

"Come, I'll drive you," Neji said with a motion to his head, indicating his car.

Shikamaru looked up before dropping his head again and groaning.

No, why God, why have you forsaken me. Shikamaru thought.

The thing is, Shikamaru knew that the girl he had been talking to for a year was Temari, Tenten's best friend. It was easy to infer a few of the information she had given him to piece the puzzle together. He had known for about a month in their relationship and didn't want to tell her because he loved how she thought she was winning. Plus, he absolutely wanted to keep the game going because it assured him that she'd have an incentive to want to meet him in real life.

He was always a bit scared she'd lose interest in him after getting to know him. He was not the most exciting man on earth. He wasn't super expressive like Naruto, funny like Kiba, and the brooding of Neji and Sasuke didn't make him the sexiest like his friends. But she seemed to enjoy his wit and dry humour immensely and truth be told, he couldn't get enough of seeing and talking to her.

But here is what made this situation delicate. He knew the friend she would bring would be Tenten and he didn't want to be here when the two ex-best-friends reunited. Then again, he didn't have much choice. He was already late and at least he could charge his phone in Neji's car.

"Just drop me off here." Shikamaru indicated the corner of a street that was a five minutes walk from the restaurant.

Neji's brows furrowed. "You're going to that French brunch place, no?"

Fuck. Shikamaru inwardly cursed. He forgot he told him about that.

As they approached the restaurant, he could already depict Tenten's twin-buns.

Fuck, fuck.

He eyed cautiously his friend, who was too occupied by the lack of parking spots to notice the brunette.

"Drop me off on the next street. I'll walk," Shikamaru assured.

Neji was about to nod, but his eyes zeroed in on a car departing.

"Here." He said as he parked, utterly oblivious to his nervous friend in the passenger seat.

He parked just in front of them on the opposite sidewalk.

Neji was about to turn to try and get a glimpse of the mysterious girlfriend Shikamaru made a point to show to no one, but before he could, Shikamaru's hand cupped his cheeks and turned his head back to him.

Neji grimaced, trying to escape the hold of his friend. "Are you...ok?" Neji asked, becoming genuinely worried about his friend's behaviour.

"Yes," Shikamaru coughed, still holding him and seeing the forbidden brunette laughing in her boyfriend's arms.

Neji, definitely, cannot see this. He thought.

"I'm just… I'm just…" Shikamaru was trying to find anything to justify this awkward position he put himself in.

He does have soft skin. I should probably ask him for his moisturizer.

"I just wanted to tell you; you are very handsome." Shikamaru finally spit out, as outraged about his words as Neji was.

What!?

"What?" Neji couldn't have looked more dismayed and confused.

The pale-eyed man broke free from his friend's hands and let out a flustered cough.

"Thanks," Neji said demurely, looking ahead to avoid eye contact. "We don't often compliment each other, err, between men because... of masculinity... and all that." The Hyuga added, shifting in his seat, uncomfortable with the turn of events. "So it's cool that you do." And after a moment of silence, he added, scrutinizing his friend's face:

"You're handsome too, Shikamaru." He said solemnly.

Though he does need a bit of moisturizing, maybe I should offer him mine for his birthday. Neji reflected.

Well, that was certainly not what Shikamaru expected from the stoic, no-nonsense Hyuga.

He cleared his throat. "Thanks, Neji."

He couldn't ponder much more on his friend's unexpected answer because, at that moment, Neji was about to turn his head again, so impulsively, Shikamaru took Neji's phone from his hands and threw it away, behind, in the backseats.

Neji turned to him, shocked. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Shikamaru plastered his most sheepish expression. "Sorry, the date got me a bit jittery and all."

Neji threw him an annoyed look before twisting to try and take his phone back. Shikamaru rushed out of the car at this moment and ran to the driver's window, making sure he could block Neji's view.

I'm putting too much effort into this shit. Shikamaru thought, already exhausted by his day.

When the Hyuga got back behind his wheel, phone in his hands, he threw another skeptical look at his friend, acting weirder than usual.

"Are you ok?" Neji ran his eyes over his friends, trying to understand why he looked so nervous and guilty. And why was he bloody smiling like that? The lazy boy usually kept a bored look on his face.

Neji gave him one suspicious last look before shaking his head. "Have a nice date." He started the car.

Shikamaru kept smiling awkwardly, waving at his friend. He wanted to stop, but the nervousness manifested in his body in ways he couldn't control.

"But tonight," Neji wiggled a finger to his friend. "I'm taking you to pass a drug test." He finished seriously.

"Ok, bye, love you." The lazy boy kept still waving nervously, barely realizing what he said until it hit him.

BYE, LOVE YOU!? Shikamaru screamed internally.

"Same," Neji replied, unsure, slowly closing his window. He let out a final "Drug test. Tonight" Before the window closed entirely and he drove away.

And with all of this, all of this painful humiliation, Shikamaru's attempts were in vain. In the end, when rushing out of the car, he forgot his wallet and Neji came back to give it to him.

Thus, it was excruciatingly frustrating, when later, hidden in the little hallway leading to the restaurant's bathroom: that he had to suffer Temari repeatedly hitting and swatting his arms.

"How. Could. You. Bring. This. Guy. To. Our. First. Date." She hissed loudly, punctuating each of her words with a swat on the poor boy.

I fucking hate this day. He thought.

"I swear - ouch - I did everything -stop this!- to make sure -ouch- he wouldn't see her." He winced again as she kept slapping his bruised shoulder. "For fuck's sake, woman!" He took her hand and gazed into the pair of eyes he had missed so much.

Not quite blue, not quite green, and he felt jittery all over again. He was close to her, an inch from her mouth, and all he wanted to do was push her against the wall, watch her eyes widen in surprise, and find her lips with his.

So that's what he did, relishing in the softness of her lips, the way her curves pressed against him. He groaned when she kissed him back, at first hesitantly then matching his ardour. He finally let go of the hand he had pinned against the wall, and Temari threw her arms around his neck, urging him to come closer. He ran his hands down her side, earning a gasp from his partner that allowed him to slip his tongue in her mouth. And as he was finally tasting his girlfriend after a year apart, he thought :

This is the best day of my fucking life.

As soon as Tenten stopped looking at him, he took his leave. This was Shikamaru's special day and he didn't want to ruin it. That and the fact he could feel the precursor signs of an oncoming panic attack. So Neji quickly walked back to his car and as soon as he was safely behind his wheel, he undid the first buttons of his shirt and started panting heavily, trying to catch his breath.

His hands clasped around the wheel, he shut his eyes tight and let the wave of anxiety roll through him, focusing on his breathing.

He hated it. He hated it so much. He hadn't had one since that time he got angry at Tenten before she went to Suna.

The last three years had been one hell of a roller-coaster for him.

The first year Tenten left, Neji was lost at the beginning. And he resented her, a lot, for leaving him behind, without a word.

Sure they had their biggest fight, but wasn't their friendship more robust than that? Did she seriously have to leave just because things got nasty? Would she have left earlier if they had a dispute of this magnitude before?

He also couldn't wrap his mind around why she had left and unwillingly, this fractured the trust he had in his friend. Didn't she know he would have done anything for her? She could have just told him to break up with Fu and he would have done so. He would have done everything to keep her close. But no, she didn't trust him. She didn't believe he would choose her over a girl she met a few months ago.

Did she have that little trust in him? Did she believe this little in him?

She called and texted all summer long, but he couldn't answer. It was too painful for him, knowing she existed somewhere, out of his reach. The wound was more bearable when he didn't engage with her. If he was to survive the following years without her, he needed to learn to compose with her absence. And he couldn't do that if every two minutes she reminded him of what he had lost.

When they started their first year of university, he managed a single sentence.

It's not that he was mad, but he was completely broken-hearted. He knew he was in this situation because of the choices he made, so this only fueled his self-hatred whenever thinking of his lost friend.

The first months at Konoha University felt like a tasteless movie he was forced to watch. Every one of his senses seemed numbed down as he watched things happen to him in slow motion. Fu hugging him while they sat down at the table their friends were at. Ino yelling at Shikamaru, Sakura stuck between Sasuke's and Naruto's dispute, Hinata chuckling at Kiba's jokes. Ordinarily, Tenten would have been next to him and he would have whispered to her little comments that would have made her laugh.

But she wasn't there.

And there lay the problem because, for the first year of his undergraduate studies in business school, all Neji could think of was how things would have been if Tenten had been there.

He'd be studying in the library and think: She probably would have liked studying here. She'd be next to the windows and next to me.

He'd go to the tailgate and think: I wonder if she is cheering Suna's football team. She would have probably been one of the loudest supporters here.

He'd go to the campus coffee shop and think: She would probably have taken their hazelnut latte. She would have loved it too. And she would have likely forced me to drink their pumpkin spice one too.

She would have teased him mercilessly when he would have applied to be part of the Epsilon fraternity house.

"In life, Neji," came his uncle's stern voice in his head. "Success all boils down to a strong network, and nothing sets you off better than knowing the right people early on in life. You're going to get in the Epsilon fraternity. It is good for business."

So he didn't have much of a choice to apply to Epsilon. On top of that, his uncle and father were both alumni of the fraternity.

The brunette would have probably laughed greatly at his expenses when he'd retell her all the hazing he had to go through. He shared those with Fu too, but it just wasn't the same. Fu didn't have Tenten's laughter, that burst and filled a room, so dangerously contagious. She lacked her witty comebacks and humour pointed at mocking him.

He had missed Tenten during every moment he had wished he could have shared with her, which meant all the time.

"Just admit how you feel, Neji."

Ino kept repeating this to him and nothing could annoy him more. In her defence, she was not the only one. Everybody had a similar speech prepared, some more subtle than others because everyone could see he had become half of who he was.

It's not that he didn't like Fu or was unhappy with her. His emotional state was not affected by her, which was one of the main reasons he agreed to go out with her. No, their relationship was going great. She was a supportive and loving girlfriend, and, physically at least, he felt attracted to her, and he did have a sort of affection towards her.

Nonetheless and happens what may, for Neji, happiness was still and would always be a twin-buns-haired girl smiling at him with gleaming warm hazelnut eyes.

"It's not too late."

Hinata kept reminding him he still had a chance. But a chance for what? Even if he broke up with Fu, that still wouldn't bring Tenten back from Suna, and he still wouldn't go out with Tenten either.

"What is blocking you."

Naruto kept digging, trying to understand him and all the illogical decisions he made.

"You love one girl that loves you back. Why are you making things complicated?"

First, at this point, Neji highly doubted Tenten would still love him. Not with the way he had given her the cold shoulder. Second, there was something about Fu's nervousness whenever he seemed to wander away to Tenten in his imagination that made him uneasy. He couldn't bring himself to break his girlfriend's heart. For what outcomes anyway?

It won't bring Tenten back anyway. He'd reason himself.

Finally, there was the most obvious reason of all. He was scared. To an unreasonable level. A crippling one. And each question or comment of his friends :

Just admit how you feel.

You still have time

What is blocking you?

... seemed to scream at him: "Stop being so scared!"

And he hated it. So the more they touched the subject of Tenten, the more he became cold, distant, irritable, sometimes even aggressive. So by the end of the first year, they stopped altogether.

He wished with every fibre of his being that he'd stopped to be so frightened. But it wasn't that easy.

It was like saying "don't be sad" to someone with depression or "don't be stressed" to someone with anxiety. Or "stop smoking" to a forty-year-old smoker.

If things were that simple, he would have snapped his fingers and made everything right. But something deep within him was terrorizing him, and thus, he kept to the status quo. Miserable, but at least safe from hurting Tenten even more.

After his birthday, where he learned from Shikamaru that Tenten had cried, he had toyed with the idea of stopping everything with Fu and going back to her, trying to make things work. But a few days after he had this thought, Fu was admitted to the hospital because she lost consciousness.

Then the following months, her health kept decreasing until she had to go back to her small village in Kirigakure, at the beginning of the winter term. It's only in March that she finally told him about her leukemia and her counted time. He had spent each of his weekends and all of his free time dotting on her and accompanying her through her final days with her family.

He could never forget how warm her hand felt in his when she exhaled her last breath once they took her off the ventilation machine. He thought dead people were cold, but they don't become cold instantly, he'd learned.

After Fu's funeral, he wasn't the same man again. He could barely function. Heck, to this day, he had not opened the bag he had packed to Fu's funeral. It sat perilously on a hidden shelf in his closet and he tried to ignore it the best he could and all the memories it brought.

He just had enough life energy left in him to lose himself in his studies and kept himself sane with training at the gym or the occasional times at the dojo. But he had no taste left whatsoever to socialize with anyone.

His uncle had pestered him with therapy all year. Every weekend he returned to Hyuga Mansion, he came to his room trying to convince him to accept an appointment with his psychotherapist.

"You're just like me, Neji. You need this." His uncle would say. In the back, his father would nod and agree with his brother.

But Neji always denied the help.

What good would therapy do to him anyway?

"Hi, my name is Neji. I lost the woman most precious to me when I traded her for my nine months girlfriend that ended up dying two years later and I yelled at her when she came to the funerals, so now she hates me."

What could a psychotherapist possibly do with that? Diagnose him as an asshole that deserved what he brought upon himself?

Oh, no, he did not need therapy.

He needed sleeping pills because, at night, he couldn't sleep, guilt seeping from his every pore. So, he collected the trazodone and the quetiapine pills in his drawers, cursing himself whenever he couldn't find the calmness necessary for slumber. Guilty for not having been better at being Fu's boyfriend. The proof was he didn't even receive a letter. She had sent a hundred letters and none were for him.

Yet, he also felt anger, but even if he didn't love her like a boyfriend ought to love a girlfriend, he had devoted himself nonetheless to her. So shouldn't he also have deserved some sort of closure in a way?

But overwhelming everything else was his guilt over how he had treated Tenten, how he finally pushed her away for good.

There wasn't a single day that passed since Neji didn't open their text conversation and hovered over his keyboard, trying to find the words to say to right his shortcomings.

I'm sorry.

I miss you.

Please, come back.

That's all he wanted to say, but he couldn't. He couldn't drag her back into the mess he was after he had ignored her when he was with Fu. This would have been too selfish.

"Hi, now that my girlfriend is dead, do you want to go back to normal?"

No, he simply couldn't go back to Tenten. At least not right away. Maybe later. Maybe next year, just until he learned how to live with the guilt of feeling he was betraying Fu.

He stalked Tenten's Instagram daily and he smiled at how she looked happy. Some part of him was relieved to see her doing well. Another wondered how she could be so content away from him when he was so miserable. And the final part thought this was the proof he needed to keep his distance from her, to avoid hurting her.

He had just returned from visiting Fu's tomb for the first anniversary of her death when Shikamaru told them of his date with his mysterious girlfriend.

"She probably doesn't exist." Kiba would laugh at their pineapple-haired man.

And today, here she was, Tenten, after a year of not seeing her or hearing her voice. It was too much for him. He could die. His heart was clenching, and he clutched his shirt with his hand, rubbing the middle of his chest, trying to ease the pain away.

It was crazy how physical, emotional pain could become.

Now, what he felt, what he still hoped for. All of that did not matter. She had someone, someone that probably deserved her more.

Images of a hand on her hip seared his mind, and he felt his blood boil all over again. He despised the idea of another man touching her, making her his. It was more than he could bear.

But he didn't have much of a choice now, did he?

He had to learn to bear with this new reality as she carried it when it was him with another.

Ironically, this time it was Neji who would be going somewhere else. HIs exceptional grades and the few strings pulled by his uncle were enough to grant him a one-year scholarship in a very reputed university abroad that solely accepted students who proved themselves exceptional.

At least, away from Tenten, who had just moved back to Konoha - as Shikamaru would tell him later that evening, he could forget about that foreign hand on her body and pretend she was still his, in a twisted way.

One year later

July 2018

It had been a little over a year since Kankuro had been with Tenten. He looked at his girlfriend on the table of four people at the restaurant where Temari and Shikamaru had met a year ago. He threw a look at the other bickering couple before gazing again at Tenten, who was lovingly stroking his hand while looking at the menu.

Kankuro loved Tenten in a way few words could describe. It sometimes drove him mad how much he loved this woman. How he couldn't stand to see any other emotion than joy on her face, how she was the center of his world, how her smile broke and mended his heart all at the same time. How when her eyes found him, every single one of his nerve cells would exult with electric energy.

Gosh, he would have done anything for this woman. Anytime she was near his sight, he had to touch her, hold her, tickle her, kiss her. He couldn't get enough of the sounds of her voice, of her laughter, of his name on her tongue. He couldn't crave enough of her scent, her skin against his, the delicate curve of her back where his hand could rest, and the way she tip-toed to kiss his cheek when he was looking away.

Tenten was his whole universe, infinite, beautiful, entirely his. He'd drink her every word and bask in the glory of her existence for every single breath he could muster out of his damned life.

Thus, it was only natural that he thought of marrying her and making her officially his. And he knew she would say yes. She was a ride or die. The moment she agreed to be his girlfriend, he knew he could count on her undying loyalty. Tenten was just this way. And she would not deny she liked their cozy relationship: she loved him, and she felt safe and cared for.

He surprised himself when he set out on the perfect date, a picnic in her favourite park of the city, near a beautiful little river when swans happily glided away on the glistening water source and where the hills were of vibrant green.

He surprised himself when he brought her blush peonies, her favourite flowers. And again, when he got a ring that sat soundly in a red velvet box hidden in his left pocket.

He led Tenten through the park to the secluded spot he had chosen. He watched her delighted expression at the picnic laid out in front of her, complete with the flowers, her favourite salted caramel cake from her favourite bakery, and a chilled bottle of champagne. All the while, the little jewelry box seemed to weigh a ton and to burn a hole through his pants.

Again, he couldn't help but be mesmerized by every part of her. Her shiny eyes and plump lips, the faint dimples in her cheeks. So it came as a perfect surprise to him when instead of 'marry me,' the following words that came out of his mouth were :

"Let's break up."

A/N: I should update chapter 7 in 2-3 days! I know I'm torturing y'all with the lack of nejiten action, but it's coming.