Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. So if you recognize anyone or anything from the anime, I'm just borrowing.
Takes place sometime before Shippuuden. Technically, it takes place in the Naruto world, but without regard to Shippuuden. The Konoha 11 are now 16ish, but I wouldn't call this AU, so I'll call it OS (for Outside of Shippuuden).
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Chapter 13
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Hinata recovered quickly but didn't get up right away. It was so warm wherever she was. Was she in bed? She moved her hand over the material beneath her. A gentle hum under her fingertips alerted her to the presence of the kikaichuu. Kikaichuu? Was she on a mission? The material beneath her face smelled like Shino, but she couldn't detect the heavier musks of Kiba and Akamaru. Her heavy lids blinked open unwillingly. Gray. Gray fabric.
"Are you feeling better, Hinata?" Shino asked solicitously.
Hinata's face burned hot, but she was able to control the urge to shiver when she looked up to meet her teammate's eyes.
"Shino-kun…"
"Nothing hurts, right?"
"H-Hai. I-I'm f-fine."
Shino nodded his approval. He didn't move to push her away now that she was awake. Instead, he let her continue to lean against him. It was okay because they were teammates, and it was only right to support your teammate. If he happened to enjoy the closeness of his particular teammate, then that was just a bonus. He wasn't doing anything wrong. Really, it wasn't wrong at all.
Hinata watched Shino's face as a host of emotions passed over it.
"Sh-Shino-kun? Are you mad at me?"
Shino shook himself away from his musings and concentrated on what she'd said. "Of course not. Why would you think that?"
"W-Well, you were f-frowning all of a sudden…"
"I'm not angry at all. I was simply thinking."
"Th-Thinking? About what?"
He shook his head. How could he explain that he'd been thinking about her?
"Idle thoughts. Nothing you should concern yourself about."
Hinata looked startled for a moment, but she soon began to giggle. "Shino-kun, you're not really prone to idle thoughts."
Shino smiled. When Hinata giggled, it was the loveliest sound, nothing at all like the vapid noises made by the girls in the village. "I'm glad you're feeling better."
Feeling more comfortable again, Hinata nodded. Despite her moment of panic, she'd always felt the most comfortable with Shino. In an uncharacteristic show of courage, she leaned toward him and let her temple rest against his shoulder; it wasn't the unconscious draping of before, but a simple and innocent closeness.
Shino swallowed hard. Hinata's warmth against his side made him want to pull her slender frame into his arms. He wanted to…he wanted to…
"Hinata? Where'd you go?" Karime called as she came down the hallway. "It's time for dinner. Oh! Um…sorry to interrupt. Uh, dinner's ready. Well, um, of course you'd know that since you made it, but we've gathered the troops and all."
"Arigatoo, Karime-san. I'm sorry you had to come all this way just to tell us."
"Hinata, are you feeling quite recovered now?" Shino asked again.
"H-Hai, Shino-kun. I'm fine now," Hinata answered, though her cheeks were a bit pink. I wonder what Karime-san thought we were doing…
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"Shinomaru, where did you go?" Taro asked sullenly. Even though he'd teased his cousin, Shinomaru was one of his only playmates. He'd had to play dolls with his two Ishitaka cousins. He hated playing dolls because they always made him play the boy character that went on dates with the girls.
"I was training," the little boy explained solemnly.
Taro was jealous. It wasn't fair that Shinomaru already had his kikaichuu hive. The boy was a whole year younger than he was!
"What did you do? Kicking the post? I practice that all the time with father," Taro preened.
Shinomaru grinned. "Hinata-neesan is training me to-"
"Who's Hinata-neesan? You don't have a sister," Taro interrupted.
"She's Shino-niisan's friend and teammate," Shinomaru explained. He was used to Taro interrupting him.
"I've never seen her."
"There she is! Right there! She and Shino-niisan are going in to dinner." Shinomaru pointed excitedly at the pair walking together along a covered walkway to the large dining room.
"The weird-looking servant girl?"
Shinomaru froze, almost stricken. "Hinata-neesan is not a weird-looking servant girl."
"Well, I guess she's not a servant girl if she doesn't work here, but she's still weird-looking."
"No, she's not! Hinata-neesan is beautiful!"
Taro, finally having found something to rile up his normally calm cousin, went for the kill. "She's not just ugly and weird-looking. She looks pretty stupid, too."
"Take that back!" Shinomaru growled before launching himself at the slightly taller boy.
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Shoromaru found the boys first. With three sons, he was well-versed in the splitting up of boys' fights. He yanked up each boy by the collar and held them apart. With a stern look from him, they both settled down immediately.
"What is going on?" he demanded in an even tone.
Neither boy said anything. Shoromaru waited.
Finally, Taro was the first to speak. "Shinomaru and I were just playing," he muttered.
Shoromaru raised a brow at that explanation, taking in Shinomaru's split lip and gashed forehead and Taro's two black eyes and bleeding nose.
"Then this is settled?"
The two little boys nodded and silently walked inside.
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Shinomaru gulped and waited with a heavy heart as his mother scolded him for getting into a fight with Taro. He almost bit his lip to keep from yelping when the sting of the antiseptic burned his forehead, but he remembered in time that his lip had the worst injury.
Across the room, Taro's mother was giving him the same scolding and wailing about his ruined looks. Oddly enough, Taro didn't seem bothered at all that his face wasn't as pretty as it usually was. He seemed almost proud to have been in a real fight. As his mother fussed and fretted, he looked up and gave Shinomaru a wide grin.
Shinomaru sighed. Taro was a strange boy. Sometimes he wondered if Taro antagonized him just for the heck of it. Usually Shinomaru never reacted to his jibes, but this made twice in a short period. But why? Why was Taro so determined to…to…? He didn't even know what his slightly older cousin was trying to do.
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Hinata's eyes popped wide as she took in the enormous bandage on Shinomaru's forehead and the nasty gash on his lip when he crept into the dining room.
"Shinomaru-kun!" She hurried over to him and knelt down before him. "What happened?"
"He got into a fight with his cousin," Kaoru explained in a clipped tone. "Shinomaru, go and wash your hands for dinner."
Hinata followed Shinomaru into the kitchen and watched as he climbed the children's stepladder and washed his hands in the sink beside Shibiki, who raised a curious eyebrow at the sight of him.
"Shinomaru-kun, what were you and your cousin fighting about?" Hinata began gently.
Shinomaru gave a tiny shrug. He didn't want to tell Hinata-neesan the bad things Taro had said about her. "We…didn't agree."
"Did you work things out?"
Again, Shinomaru shrugged.
"It's sad when family members fight…"
Shinomaru hung his head. Was Hinata-neesan disappointed in him the way his mother was?
"It's always better to work things out by talking," she continued. She picked him up and sat him on the countertop. Shinomaru felt like crying and didn't look up even when he felt Hinata-neesan's gentle fingers on his aching lip. "But, sometimes, a person just has to stand up and fight for what they believe in, ne?"
Shinomaru looked up at her in startled wonder, and he nodded slowly. She did understand.
"It's still good to talk things out after a fight, though, so you should talk to him about the way you feel. Okay?"
"Yes, Hinata-neesan."
Hinata smiled down at him kindly and softly pressed her lips against the comically large bandage on his forehead. She let her lips linger there for a few moments. The she carefully tugged it away to reveal smooth, unblemished skin.
Shinomaru blinked and reached up to feel his unmarked forehead. His lip wasn't hurting either!
"Does it still hurt?" Hinata asked solicitously.
Shinomaru started to shake his head, but then he remembered the big bruise on his left knee. He hesitated, though. Would he seem like a baby if he asked Hinata-neesan to heal it? But he wanted to watch her heal it! She was such a skilled shinobi.
Hinata followed the movement of his eyes and guessed his thought process. As a Hyuuga, she was trained to read emotions.
"The left one?"
He nodded and tugged up his pant leg. Hinata gathered green healing chakra into her palm and applied it to his small knee. Shinomaru watched in fascination as the purplish blue splotch slowly disappeared and his knee returned to its normal color.
"Hinata-neesan, arigatoo. Do you think…?"
"What is it, Shinomaru-kun?"
"Do you think I could learn to do that? One day?"
"Definitely," she nodded decisively. Hinata's heart warmed at the sight of Shinomaru's enormous smile.
Shibiki grinned at the two and slipped out of the kitchen.
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He should have been prepared. He should have been careful. He should have taken precautions. Shino stared at the look of single-minded determination on Great Aunt Zuruiko's face and knew this dinner was going to be the worst of his life. She was going to embarrass him in front of Hinata. He just knew it. How had they been seated across from her, anyway? They'd sat down at a completely empty section of the long table, and she'd suddenly appeared. What was the old woman's plan?
Great Aunt Zuruiko was suspiciously calm and reasonable for much of dinner. It wasn't until the main course that she launched her assault.
"So, Hinata-chan," she began in a conspiratorial but very voluble manner. "I hear you have a thing for this Neji from Konoha."
The shinobi in hearing range, as well as their civilian significant others, paused and looked over to see the innuendo…fly over innocent Hinata's head, smack into the wall behind her, and lie twitching on the floor.
"A thing?" Hinata wondered absentmindedly, still thinking about Shinomaru's fight with his little friend. "I never really considered it. Should I bring home some omiyage? I don't usually buy souvenirs from my missions, but this is sort of a resort area…. Shino-kun, what do you think?"
"I don't think Neji expects you to buy him a souvenir," he answered smoothly, somewhat relieved that Hinata missed Great Aunt Zuruiko's implication.
The civilians, comprised mainly of Shino's aunts, inwardly worried about this "Neji" person. The rest of the shinobi wracked their brains trying to remember who Neji was. Many had heard the name in passing. One of the new jonins, wasn't he? Shibi, one of the few in the know, cringed inwardly at how his Aunt had just about accused Hinata of incest. Luckily, that faux pas passed by without a remark.
Great Aunt Zuruiko, never one to be discouraged, soldiered on. "The local gossip says that this Akamaru fellow is pretty big."
"Oh, yes," Hinata nodded with a proud smile. "He's huge. Sometimes he even lets me ride him, though I really have to hold on tight to make sure I don't fall off."
Shibiki sputtered around an accidentally inhaled dumpling and fought to breathe while the rest of the table (who didn't know that Akamaru was an enormous nin-dog) gaped in astonishment to hear shy little Hinata say something so…so…
"He looks really wild and tough. Well, actually he is really wild and tough, but inside he's also a gentle sweetheart."
"Oh…" Great Aunt Zuruiko answered, momentarily taken aback. "What about Shino?" Maybe her somber grand-nephew would just have to look elsewhere for a girlfriend. It seemed that Hinata had her plate full.
"Oh, he doesn't really like to ride Akamaru, though he'll let him lick him sometimes."
Shino recognized that he felt extremely embarrassed, but he was no longer sure why. Was it the horror on his aunts' faces? Was it the suspiciously speculative look on Zuruiko-baasan's face? Was it the possibility that Hinata's impenetrable shield of innocence would crack?
Shibiki came to the rescue. "Um, Hinata, would you like some help carrying out the dessert?"
"Oh, that's very kind of you, Shibiki-kun! Yes, please." The two disappeared into the kitchen.
Shino took a deep breath. "Zuruiko-baasan, I appreciate your efforts, but…this is really unnecessary."
He felt like bashing his head against a wall when she reached across the table to pat his arm and said in a supportive voice, "Don't worry Shino. We'll all love you even if you like boys."
"Chigau. That is definitely not it."
"It's nothing to be ashamed of," she assured him kindly.
"While I appreciate the sentiment, I am very much attracted to girls, thank you very much."
"Well, but this Akamaru…" she trailed off.
"Akamaru is a 450 pound nin-dog," Shino informed blandly. His aunts breathed a collective sigh of sudden understanding.
"Hm…I'm not actually sure that's better than liking boys…" Zuruiko returned with a concerned look.
Perhaps he could convince Hinata to run away with him to Suna. Surely the new Kazekage was looking for a few good shinobi…
"Anyway, I'm sorry that Hinata isn't interested in you, Shino."
Then again, there was always death. Did she really have to say that just now?
"She seems very fond of this 'Neji.'"
"Neji is Hinata's first cousin. Their fathers were twins. They could not be more related by blood than if he were actually her brother. He looks just like her father. Hinata refers to him as -niisan."
"Well, you never know with cousins. Sometimes old families don't really care about that sort of thing."
"…" Shino was at a loss.
"But if you think you might have a chance, I'll keep at her, rest assured," his Great Aunt avowed.
Stricken, Shino leaped up to…
Hinata and Shibiki came in balancing a number of tarts and passed them around the long table. Shino looked at Hinata's curious face and slowly sat back down.
Zuruiko-baasan started up again. "I hear there are lots of eligible young bachelors in Konoha, Hinata."
"Huh?" Hinata was caught by surprise. Why was Shino's Great Aunt asking her such a thing? "Oh, um, hai. Are you trying to arrange a marriage for one of your granddaughters?" Hinata asked politely.
"Hm. I'm not certain. Anyone I should steer clear of? Any particularly tasty specimens?"
Shino groaned inwardly. The end of the torture was nowhere in sight. Perhaps he could fake a sudden stomach pain and draw Hinata away before any more damage was done.
"What age is your granddaughter?" Hinata inquired politely, trying to surreptitiously look down the table and see if she could spot any candidates.
"Oh, no particular age. I've got plenty, you see." If you've got your eyes set on an older man, feel free, she thought magnanimously.
"Oh." That made narrowing things down much more difficult. "Um…"
"Anyone that might make a good husband?"
"Uh…" By this time, Hinata felt a bit cornered. "Uh…Um…Iruka-sensei? He's kind and patient. He's also very level-headed."
"Hm-hm," Great Aunt Zuruiko nodded. "Anyone else?"
"Um…Genma-san? Ino-chan thinks he's handsome."
Really? Shino mused. Then he caught himself.
"Kakashi-sensei?"
"Anyone closer to your age?"
"Not that I know of. Most of them are s-spoken for, or they wouldn't be interested in an arranged marriage."
Hinata took a dainty bite of her dessert and smiled. The strawberries, mandarin oranges, and kiwis were perfect.
"Wh-" Zuruiko baasan attempted, but Shibiki deftly cut her off by exclaiming, "Why don't we play a family game after dinner? We haven't done that at all this year. It's tradition!"
The excited chatter took over and everyone moved into the family room.
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Author's Notes:
1) I've noticed my chapters are getting longer and longer. I'm starting to feel like I've got to put in a certain amount of stuff before it can be posted. Sorry for the wait!
2) Any ideas for family games?
