Title: Directus
Author: Pickled Death
Genre: Romance
Rating: PG
Summary: one-shot; Neji x Tenten; Tenten throws things and Neji thinks.
Or tries not to. Um, what?
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"Weapons specialist".
This is the thing about simplicity. Simplicity is when he melds himself to the tree behind him and closes his eyes and listens, nets the whistle of steel as it sails a painfully small fraction of a centimeter above his head. Simplicity is when he is the tree, a stability he knows she clings onto with her chipped fingernails and a plaintive frown; taking root in her life and her existence and her mind, and when he is the tree she takes shade beneath his branches with an easy smile.
The earth is red and quivering softly, imperceptibly beneath his feet, and he can only feel it when it isn't.
Canyons. Canyons, red canyons, chasms that threaten to open and swallow them whole.
He's a Hyuuga, branch family but still Hyuuga, and she's—
Steel. He conforms to a mold of steel, embracing his lean form, remains utterly, utterly still, and her chakra carefully embraces the hilts and removes the weapons from the tree just as easy as she flung them. A sound, like a thunk.
He always envisioned those weapons flying out of a stump of flesh, and the wood chips that cry out upon removal of the steel become spattering blood.
You know, he thinks she'd look beautiful in a dress.
Thick, silk and satin dresses with obscured patterns of stitches and gold. Mandarin collar, as is her preference. Hair down and cradling her thin shoulders…lips coated in an immaculate layer of glinting blood and a katana latched to the swell of her hips.
Imagery always becomes twisted. Man does dream.
Neji doesn't.
So he spends his time remaining ignorant to the visuals conjured by an overactive imagination. Because it does exist, as much as he disregards it.
Neji is growing up.
But growing up is simpler than it seems, really. The weapons lie discarded in a heap at her feet. Puppets. She breathes life into the lifeless.
She crawls over to him on her hands and knees—and collapses beneath his branches.
This is how Gai-sensei and Lee found them—she sprawled quite inappropriately in his lap, her lips carelessly mashed against his, her body heaving with the fruits of a seven-hour workout and her eyes heavy-lidded, lilting with tire but glinting because the sun always brings out the best in her, and perhaps it is her blacksmith's prowess but in summer she is in her prime and the sun maintains few grudges against her.
It's simple, really, how she breathes fresh air into his lungs.
(life into the lifeless)
It's simple as she does her best to ignore Lee's scandalized screams and he does his best not to become even the slightest bit annoyed as Lee accuses him of being a rapist and Gai-sensei is looking pretty damn pleased with himself, like he's the one who ushered them into puberty or something.
But really, this isn't hormonal and she's in no hurry to have her devotion reciprocated…though, really, it already is. He just doesn't have the words to say it.
It's not that he can't find the words; it's that he doesn't have them.
Because (and he frowns and smiles at the same time) some things just aren't as simple.