Author's Note: If you've made it this far - you are amazing! Thanks so much for reading and I'd love to know what you think.
The next time Neji knocked on her window, Ten-ten slid the shutters open without hesitation. She slid them closed just as quickly once he disappeared into the darkness of her bedroom.
Arms around her, he planted a line of kisses from her hairline to her smiling lips.
"They're not expecting me back for another night. Last mission wrapped up early, so I filed my report and came to see you."
Ten-ten answered only by bringing her lover's head down for a crushing open-mouthed kiss.
Sitting on her bed, they watched each other's faces by the slits of light that penetrated through Ten-ten's shutters. Neji lifted a hand to cup her cheek. He planned to keep his hands and eyes on her for the entire night – to remind himself she still existed, and still waited for him.
"My mom's already trying to find me a husband. You'll never guess who we had over for dinner last week."
Neji drew a sharp breath, trying to suppress a laugh. He pictured the tiny spectacled woman poring over a list of the village's eligible young men and writing out dinner invitations on scented rice paper. As the initial flash of amusement faded, the image infused their secret meeting with dread. Ten-ten's parents would grow suspicious if their daughter continued to resist suitor after suitor for months to years. He needed to secure their future quickly.
She might start liking one of them. Neji wiped the thought from his mind.
She told me herself. She trusted me with her body. That means she's not leaving, he insisted to himself.
"Shino?"
Ten-ten squeezed his hand.
"Nope. That would require someone to finally remember him."
"That neighbor of yours? The weapon smith's son?"
"Good guess, but still no. No more kisses until you get it."
He sighed. Ten-ten's joke sent needles through Neji's heart. We already don't have much time, he thought.
"Then I'll take them, and I know you won't stop me."
"Okay, I'll give you a hint – power of youth. His mom is friends with my mom."
"Him? You're joking!" Neji let a single laugh escape before grabbing Ten-ten's shoulders to claim his kiss.
She held a single finger to his lips, pushing him onto his back so she could lay her head on his shoulder.
"Hey, my parents are sleeping downstairs. Don't want Mom to know she's wasting her time with the matchmaking thing. Or that she needs to install bars on my window."
"So, did Lee say anything about us?"
"Besides that he's practicing new jutsu to finally beat you? He doesn't think we should still be seeing each other. Hope you don't mind that I told him," Ten-ten said, her voice downcast.
She hated feeling trapped between her two teammates, even if she still resented Lee's blind loyalty to the rules that bound Neji to a miserable fate. Yet every time, she would choose her lover's happiness over honoring a marriage certificate. Or maintaining Lee's friendship and approval.
"I figured," he sighed.
Neji knew Lee held rules and commitments with almost religious reverence. He envied that his teammate never encountered situations that tested his values or led him to question whether rules needed following in every circumstance.
Feeling Ten-ten's skin through her cotton nightgown, Neji ran his fingertips in loose circles over the curve of her lower back, signaling the end of their conversation on Lee. Though he trusted Ten-ten to resist her mother's manipulations, he didn't enjoy discussing the husband candidates she had lined up to replace him.
Ten-ten slid a cool hand under his shirt. Resting on the heat of his chest, her hand soon warmed. They unraveled under the steady rhythms of each other's breathing and slowing heartbeats. Just before he dozed off beneath his lover's comforting weight, Neji felt her head lift on his shoulder, jolting him back awake.
"So, got a plan yet? Wouldn't be Neji without a battle plan," Ten-ten whispered dreamily.
She really thinks I've thought 10 steps ahead by now.
Neji's stomach roiled. No sleeping now. He'd betrayed Ten-ten by marrying Risa, and now he betrayed her trust by promising a future together without a straightforward way to achieve it. The tactician of Team Gai lacked any plans – other than stalling while he continued camping on the sofa.
"Uh. Tell your parents you don't plan to marry until you make jounin," he rambled, trying to bolster her faith.
Before continuing, Neji drew a deep breath.
"Ten-ten. We might have to leave the village."
Ten-ten sighed and buried her face in the hollow between his neck and shoulders. She sidestepped the matter of leaving the village, hoping Neji would drop it. The thought of moving – establishing her shinobi career elsewhere, saying goodbye to her parents, abandoning her friendships – brought almost as much anxiety as never again being with Neji openly.
"They won't buy it. We asked them two months ago, remember?"
The day Neji knocked on the Satos' apartment door with a handwritten letter in hand, his grip on Ten-ten's hand was the only thing keeping him from fleeing. Ten-ten's mother ushered them inside for evening tea, letting him explain his request while Ten-ten closed her eyes and squeezed his hand hard enough to cause pain.
"Yes, but there was...a matter of timeliness then. Tell them things are different now. You've realized you want to make jounin before the obligations of marriage make it unobtainable."
When Neji met Ten-ten's father's glare, he almost dropped hot tea into his lap. Her father glanced at Ten-ten. Then, remarked that he didn't think someone who looked and sounded so much like a woman was capable of getting his daughter pregnant. Ten-ten had squeezed her eyes shut to stem the flow of tears down her cheeks. Neji was too preoccupied with soothing his lover to care about the insult.
And that meeting had gone much better than the one with his uncle. He thanked the gods he'd barred Ten-ten from attending that one.
"I'll try," Ten-ten muttered in resignation.
Neji could sense her disappointment, but he couldn't be sure if it was a focused disappointment directed at him or a formless malaise targeted at the universe.
"Would you leave with me, Ten-ten?"
Now Ten-ten's chest seized with dread.
"You know I love you, Neji."
Don't make me choose. She cupped his cheek and wrapped her lips around his. Though his lips puckered, Ten-ten didn't feel them melt into her kiss – instead, Neji watched her with hardened eyes.
"And I love you. Enough to leave everything," he stated as he held Ten-ten's face with both hands.
Ten-ten noticed his voice lacked the usual inflection with which he said I love you.
"I hope it's not the only way," she whispered, her breathing quickening.
Sensing her distress, Neji combed one hand through her hair and softened his tone. He felt the unresolved question souring their time together, turning each word and touch into a challenge.
Neji's eyes moistened and his face was suddenly uncomfortably warm – the more he parsed her words, the more he realized she'd already answered.
"What if it is, Ten-ten? I-you know it's not what I want either. But the Hyuga clan pulls the hokage's strings –"
Pausing, he heard muffled curses from where Ten-ten lay with her head nestled on his shoulder.
From the early days of their friendship, Ten-ten had watched Neji's jutsu with awed eyes and loudly rebuffed those who doubted his abilities, even in matters unrelated to the training arena. Neji still recalled her stubborn insistence that he could beat Lee in an eating contest, then her fuming silence when he couldn't. Ten-ten's tiny smirk, the one that said you haven't seen the best of Neji yet, never failed to shoot warmth through his entire body.
Seems like she still has a hard time accepting the limits of what I can do, he thought. For a fleeting moment, he wondered whether reaching that conclusion would kill her enthusiasm for their relationship.
No, she loves me. She just said so herself. His mental insistence rang louder this time.
"Ten-ten, weren't you the one who said there's no going back? That you would follow me anywhere? Do anything for us to be together?"
Pressing his face into Ten-ten's hair, Neji whispered a gentle reminder of the words she said the first time he'd slipped through her window with a box of rubber wrapped in foil packets.
The memory of her 16-year-old self's bold declaration just seemed to make Ten-ten angrier. The words came so easily when Neji still basked in his clan's good graces and she still coasted on the euphoria of her first time falling in love.
And he's really taking that literally? – Ten-ten fumed. Surely the occasion excused a bit of overstatement on my part.
"As if you're all I have," she snapped. "You're not the only thing in my world."
The words cut Neji straight to the heart – he expected her to push back with her usual assertiveness, not venom. She thinks I'm pathetic for saying I'd turn my back on the village for her. He certainly didn't expect Ten-ten to throw his commitment back in his face as if it were an insult.
"Ten-ten, do you have to say it that way?" Neji selected his words carefully, suppressing his rising outrage.
"Forget that there's no way Lady Tsunade's going to let me skip out just because of you. Forget that I don't know anyone outside the village. At least I need to take care of my parents. But I guess yours aren't around, so you wouldn't know."
Ten-ten gave Neji's shoulder a shove before rolling to face the wall. She curled her shoulders and folded her knees into a defensive ball, closed off from him.
She resented that Neji would force her to choose between the love they'd nurtured and the bonds that tethered her to the village. Anything short of full devotion to him at the expense of everything else, he seemed to consider insufficient.
"Just...can't you do something else?" she whispered, all vitriol drained from her voice.
"You think it's easy for me? Easy to break away like this to see you? Why do I have to do everything while you're not even trying?" Neji responded through locked teeth. "Nice of you to mock my dead father, too."
"Yeah? I'm not trying? Waiting for you and staying with you after all the shit that happened...that's not trying at all?"
Ten-ten almost yelled, but kept her voice just quiet enough that her parents wouldn't awaken.
He resolved to slip out the window and back to the Hyuga compound before his emotions overtook the veneer of calm he still managed to keep. Maybe seeing Ten-ten so soon was a mistake. I'm setting her expectations too high, he concluded.
Neji took a deep breath, attempting to loosen the tightness in his muscles. Moving with stealth would be difficult with his body seized by anger.
As he sat up in bed, Ten-ten grabbed the hem of his shirtsleeve, a single whine escaping her lips.
"Hey...I'm sorry. Please. Don't leave me," she pleaded.
He stiffened, not acknowledging her words.
"I figured, you know – you always find a way out. Sorry. Just...take your time," Ten-ten muttered.
She rose to rest her chin on the part of his hair and reached to unfasten the clasp holding his shirt together.
"No. I'm not interested tonight."
A cold hand stopped her from even touching the clasp. Neji squeezed Ten-ten's wrist hard enough to almost halt the flow of blood to her hand.
"Ow – hey! You just needed to say so."
"Ah, sorry. I really should go before I do anything else regrettable."
He pressed his lips to her bruised wrist and circled his thumb where he'd grasped tightest.
"Maybe you should," Ten-ten concurred with an edge of hostility in her voice. "Goodnight. Have fun sleeping next to her."
"Perhaps you should consider sleeping before you say anything else regrettable, Ten-ten."