Title: Situation Normal
Author: Pickled Death
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Summary: one-shot; Neji x Tenten; she was graying but never aging, and
she was his.
Author's Notes: So this one's, um, different. Say what you will, but I
kind of like this one.
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The first time he'd undressed her was in the Hyuuga manor, where her laughter pealed through the halls, saturating the opaque, paper-doll walls with her damnable all-knowingness. She'd cooked dinner that night, discreetly dismissed the household servants in order to ghost into the kitchen, mastered the art of crushing prepackaged noodles, and swore and laughed when she emerged with a pot of ramen and fingers cooked medium rare; Hanabi stole an ugly glance at the fact that there was a set of non-milk eyes grazing her table, but said nothing of it and hightailed it out of there when the chandelier went dark.
Actually, they'd trained first. Just a little, in the black. Her chakra network rerouted itself at times—a little slow-moving technique she'd picked up to confuse him back in their genin days—and he could see her fingertips crackling and all her feints, but her lazy grin practically glowed. His mastery of the snakelike hallways far outdid her knowledge of them, but that was only because she'd never been in the manor itself before, only in that cheap, crappy little flat he'd rented so as to suppress his homicidal urges towards the main house for the time being, and only on the grounds.
Then he flitted out of the fourteenth guestroom, deftly sneaking past her outstretched knife-hand, and then she reached out and kissed him not-so-blind, laughed softly against his shock-frozen lips and pulled back and sneaked away—and then he'd tugged impatiently on her arm and she reached out with a butter knife to nick his wrist, but he flattened her against him and ignored the way she laughed in her throat when he kissed her. And he stumbled and she glided back into the fourteenth guestroom with his hands cupping her neck and her ass, and when she straddled him with the knives forgotten in the wall she'd smile every now and then like she knew something he didn't.
The second time was in her horrifyingly sterilized apartment, where shelves collected dust and the weapons were tarnished décor spattered on the walls, and the bed looked brand-new though he'd seen it years ago.
This time, he demanded she order takeout, and she complied with only a roll of those chocolate eyes he'd come to accept as part of his life and mind. She laughed and shivered when he licked the soy sauce from her breast, and said nothing the next morning, only smiled and showered alone as he had the presence of mind to sit up.
The bed actually went unused.
The couch creaked in weary protest, and he swears today that it scorns him in all its inanimateness.
The third time was at her place, again, and this time they used the bed because she'd claimed the couch had undergone enough abuse for one lifetime. The morning after, she quietly replaced herself with a pillow and showered alone again, and he'd sat up again and glared when she tightened the towel cradling her body, and he wondered why she smiled serenely, dressed hidden from view, bound her hair in front of a mirror and directed him to the spare towels in the third shelf of the second closet. The next was at the manor; Hinata's squeak of terror resounded through the place, and hastily she ushered a good amount of white-eyed servants and her fuming younger sister out the door.
The fifth time, the morning after, he'd apparently awoken first and pressed his ear earnestly to her chest, listening to the dull thud of her heartbeat hammering in her ribs—and then suddenly there was a poof and there was a pillow and a note, claiming she'd been summoned pre-sunrise to dispose of a renegade nin breezing the Konohagakure border. When she returned with her hunter-nin mask latched to her hipbone he fisted his hands in her collar and slammed her against the wall, put his leg between her thighs and—
—asked why.
She smiled again when he asked, that same phantasmal serenity overtaking her lovely features, and said nothing as he leaned in—but instead of kissing her, instead of clawing greedily at the hem of her shirt, he simply buried his face in her shoulder and willed, willed with everything, for her pain to depart—and she knew he was trying, and said nothing when he was failing.