Title: Still I Rise -- #25: acid
Characters/Pairings: Hinata, Neji, Lee
Rating: K+ for urges?
Notes: Inspired by a real, live event in o-chem lab: I burned a hole right through the sleeve of my shirt with concentrated sulfuric acid, and I've got a ruined shirt and a lovely burn on my arm to forever commemorate those miserable five hours I spend getting high on bromine fumes. Oh, medical school, the things I do in pursuit of you.
Lee, Neji thinks for the umpteenth time that day, is a complete moron. This certainly isn't the first time the thought has passed Neji's mind, but it has been passing with a higher and higher frequency, and all because the green idiot has gotten it into his (doubtlessly empty) head that he, Neji, had feelings for Hinata.
"Preposterous," he says immediately after Lee's inquiry.
Lee's eyes go very round (rounder, if that were even possible) and he launches immediately into a charged speech about youthful energy, how Neji is wasting it while languishing in a lab all day, and how he should be out and about bursting into flames with its spirit or something. Neji stops listening and turns back to his recrystallization.
Or, rather, he would have stopped listening and stopped grinding his teeth and would have not broken three glass pipettes and not burned a hole clear though his shirt with concentrated sulfuric acid if Lee had not hit the nail on the head, so to speak.
Not that he would ever tell the gibbering green nincompoop, of course. It bothers Neji very, very much that Lee is right about something so very indecent.
And it bothers Neji, bothers him like nothing else, far, far more than anything that Lee could rhapsodize about, that he could feel such—such—such animalistic and base urges towards his cousin. A cousin, his mind says snidely, who had come to him in a moment of extreme need and duress and who he should treat with the utmost respect. She is his cousin, for Christ's sake! His roommate!
And yet, he remembers, just the other day, stumbling upon her while she napped on his couch. His mind, traitor that it is, remembers every minuscule detail: the undulation of her hips, the delicate curl of her toes, the slant of her collarbone. He should have simply placed a blanket on her and gone on with his life, but no—no, he had stared at her for an undetermined amount of time and fought off the inexplicable urge to kiss her neck like some hormonal teenage primate, before catching himself in the shameful act.
It's even worse when she's freshly showered with damp hair that's clinging to bright pink cheeks and smelling like his shampoo. Much, much worse.
It is enough to make Neji's ears burn red in shame.