Complications
by Nilladriel
2: not quite a confession
He woke up with sunlight on his face, and that was funny, because his room faced the sunset, not the dawn. And then he realized he was staring up at a too-white ceiling, and that the walls were obnoxiously white, too, except for a stain in the corner, and that looked suspiciously like blood.
And there were flowers by his bed, and Neji wasn't girly enough to have flowers in his room. All this, he finally decided, meant he was in a hospital room. He hated hospital rooms; he spent far too much time in them, sometimes with his body screaming in agony and once, after encountering a really nasty ninjutsu, with his mind screaming in agony, and oh, that had been hell.
The girls of Rookie 9 (and he still didn't quite understand how he and Lee and Ten-Ten belonged to the Rookie 9) had probably brought the flowers to him together. They'd taken to doing everything together lately, and had even begun to giggle in tandem. Still, he appreciated the flowers. It was nice to see some color in the room.
Neji could hear people approaching—two of them. Their voices were familiar. Visitors?
One was Sakura. He could tell because she was yelling, and he knew no one else that could yell as loud as her. "Honestly!" she yelled-screamed-ranted. "I don't believe you! You haven't visited even once, have you?"
And then the door was slammed open, and Neji realized with horror that Sakura had been yelling at Naruto.
Neji looked at Naruto, and Naruto looked at Neji, and awkward silence filled the room.
And then Sakura shoved Naruto forward. "Go on," she said, her voice as commanding as the Hokage's. "I don't know what went on between you two, but I want you to fix it."
She put her hands on her hips and glared at them both—first Neji, as if he was at fault, and then Naruto, who definitely was. "I," she said, like an executioner declaring a sentence, "am going to get a drink."
The poor door was slammed again.
Naruto stood in front of it, looking like an angry, embarrassed child. His face was red. Neji's, thankfully, wasn't.
"Look," Naruto said finally, "I—"
Neji was tired of looking up at Naruto. "Sit down," he interrupted, and after a shocked moment Naruto did. The little wooden stool groaned a little under his weight.
"Look," Naruto began again, "I—that night, when you—"
"When I kissed you?" Neji said, and was surprised at how cold his voice was. In the last two months he'd been distant to Naruto, yes, and had had a disturbing urge to blush and play with his fingers as Hinata did, but he'd never been cold. Awkward, yes, and embarrassed, but not cold.
"Yeah." Naruto looked taken aback. "When you, um, kissed me." A pause. Neji stared resolutely at his hands, which were tightly clenched. "What..."
Neji waited. Naruto didn't continue, so after a while Neji looked up. The blond ninja looked horribly awkward, and his ears were red. He looked angry at himself, and would probably have been relieved if the ground had decided to swallow him up.
And suddenly Neji just felt tired. Tired of the feelings that welled up in him every time Naruto looked at him, tired of the way he suddenly felt like his skin was too tight every time Naruto was in the same room, tired of the rush of love-gratitude-respect that tangled up his guts and left his head feeling light.
He shouldn't have tried to kiss Naruto. He should have just sat there and—and admired the moon, or something.
"I meant nothing by it," Neji said, and closed his eyes. He felt old. All he needed was an aching back and a cane and a lawn to yell children off. "When I... kissed you." Attempted to kiss you. "I meant nothing by it."
"Yeah, right," Naruto said.
Neji glared at him. "I meant nothing by it," he repeated, and cold was creeping again into his voice.
Naruto looked at him—a long, hard, accusing stare. "Yeah, right," he repeated. "Saying it again isn't gonna make it true."
Neji snorted.
"You can't just—pretend it didn't happen," Naruto said.
"I'm not," Neji said. "I'm saying it didn't matter."
"It did matter," Naruto snapped, and Neji's eyes widened slightly. Naruto sounded offended. "It matters because obviously it meant something to you, and you shouldn't try and act like it never happened, and even if you did it's not like it would just—unhappen! Things don't work out that way, and you know it!"
He was yelling. Neji counted to ten, and then said, "So—what? We agree the... kiss... happened. And then what?" He sneered.
That night, when he'd not-quite brushed his lips against Naruto's, he'd felt like he'd taken destiny into his own hands. Apparently he'd forgotten that destiny could turn around and bite him in the ass.
"What did you mean by it, really?" Naruto asked, and amazingly his voice was quiet.
"I..." Neji stopped. A hospital was hardly the place to confess his love, and he wasn't even sure he loved Naruto. So he settled for, "I like you." A lot.
"Alright," Naruto said uncomfortably.
"So I..."
Neji stopped again. They were ninja. Actions spoke louder than words. They connected best on the battle-field, when life faded away and death ruled, when the world became blood and sweat and sharp, sharp metal, when everything and nothing could be communicated with a simple gesture or a slight narrowing of the eyes.
He had healed his and Hinata's relationships by choosing to spar with her, and told Lee that yes, they were still friends and rivals by beating him into the dirt. He respected Gai the most when his former teacher was grinning a half-mad grin and showing that his awful green suit wasn't the only reason he was the Green Beast of Leaf. And he knew Ten-Ten best when she was pulling forth a scroll, eyes shining, and summoning enough kunai to make him hope he would end the day with all his limbs intact.
But he couldn't explain all this to Naruto, somehow. His words had always been proper, but he'd never been particularly eloquent. He couldn't explain that a kiss had seemed better than an awkward confession—not, he thought dryly, that the kiss hadn't been awkward.
Naruto was still looking at him, and waiting.
Neji was aware that he was blushing. "I," he began again, voice soft, "like you. So I kissed you."
It was simple enough logic. Naruto nodded, and then suddenly looked uncomfortable again.
"Neji," he said, almost gently but mostly not. "You know I don't like you, um, that way, right?"
I know, Neji thought. And truthfully he'd known that Naruto was definitely straight. After all, Naruto's most famous jutsu after his favorite Shadow Clone technique was Sexy no Jutsu. But he'd hoped...
"You made it more than obvious," he said.
"I'm sorry," Naruto said.
He felt tired all over again. "Don't be."
There was another pause. "We're still friends, right?" Naruto said, and Neji's heart ached. Naruto sounded like a... like a puppy that was about to be abandoned and was looking up at its owner with begging, soft brown eyes.
"Still friends," he agreed immediately, and Naruto sighed, relieved.
Sakura entered then, a strange expression on her face. Neji suddenly had the suspicion that she'd been listening outside the door. He wondered if she'd gone anywhere at all. After all, she hadn't returned with any drinks.
He couldn't summon the energy to glare at her, though. So he just stared at the wall with a carefully blank gaze while Sakura firmly clasped Naruto's wrist and took him out the door.
The sunlight was warm on his face, but Neji felt cold.
Neji was released later that day. He'd been slammed through multiple boulders, if he remembered correctly, but it was nothing that the medic-nin hadn't been able to fix, and he felt fine, although Ten-Ten had given him a look when he'd told her this and barked out a laughing "Yeah right!" that had abruptly reminded Neji of Naruto.
His argument-confession-agreement with Naruto had left him feeling... empty. He declined Lee's exuberant offer to treat him to dinner, which led to his rival-friend thinking he'd done something wrong, and he'd escaped Lee's attempts to cheer him up pretty quickly. Thankfully, Lee wasn't that dense, and although he probably would have been able to track Neji down, he didn't.
The moon wasn't as full as it'd been on that night, but it was as bright as ever. Neji closed his window; that way he wouldn't have to see it.
And then he sulked. There really wasn't any other word for it. He sat on his bed in his room and sulked.
There was an attempt to study his scrolls, but he couldn't concentrate; he tried to do a few simple exercises—there was space enough in his room—but after a while he gave up.
He was—confused and hurt and resigned, but most of all he was angry. Angry at himself for trying to kiss Naruto, angry at thinking that anything would ever happen, and most of all—
Most of all he was angry at himself for even liking Naruto. For... loving him. For falling in love.
For hoping.
"Neji?" a soft voice spoke, and Neji started.
"Hinata," he said stiffly. "Come in."
Hinata entered. She stopped and looked around the room, and Neji had to suppress a snort. She always seemed surprised when she entered his room, as if she hadn't seen it a hundred times before. He didn't understand why.
She had a tray with her, and she put it down onto the desk. There were two cups of tea on it, as well as a bowl of rice and chopsticks and a little dish of fish. Neji realized with a start that he'd missed dinner.
She pulled his chair out and sat in it, and then looked at him.
"I thought you might be hungry," she said, simply and solemnly. The effect was rather ruined by the way she kept fidgeting, and the way her eyes would sometimes dart to the ceiling or wall or windows, but she'd gotten much better at controlling her expression.
"Thank you," Neji said. He got up and crossed the room and picked up the cups of tea; one he handed to Hinata, and the other he took with him when he sat back down onto the bed.
They drank in silence for a while, Hinata looking out the window and Neji studying Hinata. There was an anxious expression on her face, and he had a suspicion as to what, exactly, she was going to talk to him about.
He was proven right.
"I heard from Sakura," she said carefully, "that you tried to confess your feelings to Naruto and that it didn't go very well."
Neji stared at her. Confess his feelings? All he'd done was try to kiss the damn fool—
Unless Sakura really had been eavesdropping. He made a mental note to kill her. Later.
"Neji," she said, noticing his expression and wincing, "do you... um, do you love Naruto?"
He said nothing. They were like brother and sister again, and he'd held her in his arms while she cried more than once, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to say yes, I love him, and he told himself that maybe it was because he didn't.
Naruto's voice spoke up in his head then, a fresh memory: Yeah, right.
Neji sipped his tea and resolutely said nothing.
"Neji?" Hinata asked. He was only half-surprised by her persistence. "Do you love Naruto?"
"I don't know," he said finally.
"Neji," Hinata said again, and her gaze was sad. She put her tea down and looked at him. "I'm sorry."
Naruto had said that, too, he thought.
Hinata went on looking at him with a sad gaze, as if his crush not reciprocating his feelings was the worst thing in the world—and there were children starving and people being murdered and such, wasn't there? And then she stood up and hugged him. He didn't hug back, his back straight and his shoulders stiff, but he didn't push away, either.
"Make sure you eat," she told him, and walked out of the room. Neji stared after her with a bemused expression on his face.
The next day found Neji waiting outside the hospital. He was leaning against a convenient tree, and passerby's gave him curious looks. Neji ignored them.
He didn't have to wait long; Sakura came out soon enough. She gave him a surprised look, and slight wariness crossed her features. "Neji," she said. "Good afternoon." Apparently deciding this sounded too formal, she added, "And, uh, hey."
"Sakura," he greeted her. "Would you like to walk with me for a while?"
"Sure," Sakura agreed, and that wary look returned. They walked in silence at first, Sakura adjusting her hitai-ate. Her gloves peeked out of her pocket, and they reminded Neji not to get too offensive; this was a woman who could shatter walls.
"You told Hinata about my and Naruto's..." He searched for a word, and then: "About our discussion," he said finally.
There was a pause. She looked guilty. "Um... yes?" she ventured.
He stopped, crossed his arms, and looked at her. "Why?"
She tugged on her skirt, her face fast matching the color of her hair. "It slipped out," she admitted.
"It slipped out," he repeated, and stared.
"She knew anyway," Sakura said, sounding defensive.
Now Neji just looked blank, so Sakura felt obligated to explain. "Well, she didn't really know," she said. "But she'd already guessed at it. You're mad, aren't you."
The stare returned. Sakura laughed a little at that, and Neji was surprised until he remembered she was used to Sasuke.
"I'm sorry for listening," she said. "I wasn't going to, I promise. But then you said you'd kissed him, and, um, well... that doesn't help my case any, does it," she finished, noticing his expression.
Neji closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them again. "It was a... private matter," he said.
Sakura blushed again. "I know!" she said. "I just—well—I couldn't believe—you, in love with Naruto!"
Neji wasn't sure what to feel at that, so he just decided on angry. He could do angry. He'd done it for the first half of his life.
"I won't tell anyone else," Sakura promised. "But, you know, everybody's already figured it out. But I won't tell, anyway. Okay?"
Neji woke up the next day to find that everybody knew.
Ten-Ten gave him looks that were bewildered and confused and pitying all at once. Lee kept trying to drag him off to train or eat. Gai gave him pensive, thoughtful looks that were down-right disturbing.
Neji thought that maybe he would kill Sakura sooner rather than later.