Ricochet
"Are you sure, Ino?"
He studied the material in his large hands, tracing the pattern with his eyes and mentally debating if such simple design was enough to divert attention from it's vibrant burgundy color. Ino flashed him a confident smile and nodded.
"Of course I'm sure, Chouji. Have I ever steered you wrong? Dark red looks great on you."
He relaxed, grateful to have such a fashionable person for a best friend. Every year he outgrew last year's yukata, so every year she enthusiastically went shopping with him for a new one. And every year, she would just happen to buy herself a new yukata too. Just because. Something caught her eye and Ino tugged him behind her towards the women's fabric section. She singled out a swath of material depicting iridescent swans over a white, pale yellow, and lavender background and picked it up, holding it reverntly in her hands. It far surpassed last year's powder blue yukata with silver stars, and Ino was almost giddy with the thrill of finding it. She signalled for one of the shop attendants to come over.
"Yes, Yamanaka-san?"
Of course, being someone who knew nothing of the word budget, Ino was well-known to the staff.
"We'll be taking these two. The usual five yards for me and this time twelve for Chouji. Can you make them overnight? I know it's kind of last minute this year..."
"I'm sure we can make it happen, Yamanaka-san."
Ino knew that meant the shop would give hers and Chouji's order prority, putting all other works in progress aside until theirs were finished. It paid to be a favorite among their patrons. She picked out a pale yellow obi to match her yukata and they paid the attendant in advance, leaving the store. Chouji's stomach rumbled and he glanced at a curry restaurant across the street hungrily.
"You hungry, Ino? I'll treat."
"Nah, you go on without me. I have to go see if I can find Shikamaru's yukata so he'll have something to wear tomorrow. You know he'll show up in uniform if I don't."
Chouji nodded, that was something that would be very Shikamaru-like. And knowing his other best friend, the yukata the Nara had for the past three years was probably still crumbled at the bottom of a closet from when he threw it there last year. Ino would have to find it for his mother Yoshino to iron it so Shikamaru could wear it and then maybe Ino would be happy. If Shikamaru wasn't grumpy, maybe. Team Ten had always operated with a secondary objective of keeping Ino happy, they weren't about to change that now. He waved as she took off down the street and almost immediately the shadow the store casted around him darkened. The heavyset ninja chuckled.
"You know, your room will look like a war zone once she's done going through it. Wouldn't it be easier to meet her there and try to help?"
Shikamaru stepped out of the shadows, fishing a cigarette and lighter from his vest pouches.
"Better to let Ino be Ino. If I try to help, I'll just be in her way."
"You're avoiding her."
Shikamaru shrugged, fixing the lit cigarette between his lips. "She's got that look in her eye again. She's started to like somebody."
Chouji shook his head, disappointed.
"Why do you disappear every time Ino gets a new boyfriend? She hasn't said anything, but she notices."
It was true. Like a mirage in the desert, Shikamaru vanished into thin air each time Ino had a new love interest. Ino asked Chouji once why Shikamaru did that. He couldn't giver her an answer.
The lazy nin slid his hands into his pockets and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
"I'm tired of seeing her heart get broken. She always picks the guy with a pretty face and a bad attitude."
He had a point there. Every since Ino's first love had joined the darkside, each guy afterward had been dark-haired, extremely skilled, and didn't give a damn about her. A person would have to be blind not to notice the pattern. Being close as brothers to her, both Chouji and Shikamaru had tried at different times to point that fact out to Ino, but she got defensive about it and they had to swallow their protests.
"Ino's tough. If this one breaks her heart too, she'll bounce back. She always does."
Always. In mathematics, "always" was a perfect word, an absolute certainty. Two plus two is four and you can't divide by zero. When it came to Ino however, Shikamaru liked to say that she was consistently inconsistent. There was no "always" with Ino.
Shikamaru took a long drag and exhaled loudly, staring up at the darkening clouds. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something told him that this time would be different. And not in a good way.
Tenten smiled at her reflection in the mirror as she finished tying the obi around her yukata, pride sweeping through her. Thank goodness for yukata being far simpler to put on than furisode, she didn't think she could handle the shame of calling for help and being dressed again. It had been more than a decade since she last attended a festival, Team Gai always seemed to be deployed whenever the year's festivals rolled around, and likewise the past two years Neji had been away for them. This would be the first time she would get to enjoy a Konoha festival with her husband. She had busied herself the previous night rumaging around in the closets locating Neji's informal yukata and laid it out for tonight. She had even prepared his bath for him an hour ago to put him in good spirits for the night. Now, she heard him moving in the livingroom and abandoned her reflected self to help him put on his yukata, immensely pleased with herself for remembering.
Her pleasure was doused when she saw he'd beat her to it already, every fold meticulously placed in order as the dark material covered his form perfectly in testament to his expertise. She couldn't help but to mope a little as she re-brushed his hair and re-tied it at his back, the only thing he hadn't done yet.
"Something is troubling you." he stated softly, just loud enough to reach Tenten's ears. It wasn't until times like these that she realized how quiet the house was with just the two of them.
"No, it's nothing."
She denied it like always, never quite having the courage to admit it when something affected her. All her life she had been taught to be tough-as-nails and impervious to matters of emotion, to the extent that it wasn't until age seventeen after five years of lovesick suffering that she could confess her feelings to Neji, and sharing her moods freely still took some prodding.
Neji was aware of this. Though he'd been caught by surprise with his teammate's confession years ago, in the time since he had learned much about the inner workings of Tenten's outward self. Her sense of logic had always been so linear, almost masculine, that he had sometimes pondered if she, unlike other kunoichi, had considered her gender to be a disadvantage rather than an advantage. He found himself at times having to reassure her that she was fine the way she was, that she didn't need to hide things about herself she considered to be points of weakness and that it was perfectly fine to tell him her thoughts, he would never scorn her for them. She was his wife, and he hoped that one day she'd fully understand all of what that meant.
"Tell me."
He led her around the front of him with a gentle grasp on her arm, beckoning her to look him in the face. He saw shame in her eyes when she did.
Tenten felt stupid. Her moping over something so inconsequential had caught Neji's notice and now he was concerned; he wasn't going to let the night pass without an explaination. She almost wanted to lie, to make something up that sounded worthy of moping over, but he always knew immediately whenever she tried to be dishonest with him.
"...I wasn't able to dress you like I should have."
He put a hand on her cheek, his own way of trying to comfort her.
"Why would you care about such trivialities? Tenten, I don't hold you accountable for-"
"It's not trivial. It matters to me! I feel like I can never do anything for you, you're always two steps ahead of me."
He tilted her chin upward, placating her with a soft kiss. Trying to remind her that she didn't have to catch up to him; she already had him.
"You do enough for me."
I do enough?
It was a far cry from what Neji's thirteen or even fifteen year old self would have ever said. "Enough" was practically a taboo word among Team Gai, because good enough was never good enough. Your aim was never to be good enough, but to be the benchmark everyone else measured themselves against. Neji had never been one to accept bare minimum performance, but then again, his standards were only set for himself.
He never cared to set expectations for anyone else.
It was jarring, to recognize that there was a very high chance that Neji never expected anything in return from her. She didn't know whether to feel relieved of having to meet what would surely be impossibly high standards, or insulted that he didn't even bother. What did it mean to "do enough" for someone? Was there even such a thing? Neji kissed her again, and Tenten tried to shut off her mind's over-analyzing. There'd be time for reading into things later, for now she wanted to enjoy this rare night.
As the pair left the house and walked down streets decked in bright lights and streamers weaving through throngs of people, Neji tried to piece together exactly what was wrong with his wife. She had answered him when he asked, but he was left with the feeling that the issue was deeper than she was letting on. Even now, walking beside him, she was pretending as if everything were fine and that bothered him more than her open moping earlier. He had meant to relax her by kissing her earlier, like he always did, but it seemed to have no effect this time. In the early days of their relationship, all it would take was a kiss for Tenten to forget her troubles but now it looked as though her worries had outgrown the remedy of mere kisses. If anything, instead of relaxing her the kiss had convinced her to bottle her feelings up. He held her hand just a little tighter in his and wondered why it felt like she was so far away.
Shikamaru was stunned. Really, really stunned. He'd seen Ino everyday for most of his life, seen her in various states of undress, and seen her in yukatas every year for the festival but he'd never seen her look quite like this. Never seen bossy little Ino look quite so exquisite. Refined. The yukata wrapped around her body elegantly, the light colors signalling her youthfulness and the expensive material announcing her tastes. She had forgone the tradition tabi socks, painted toes resting on her high wooden geta normal girls struggled to walk in and a dainty anklet making a tinkling noise with every step she took. But most of all, it was her face that took his breath away. Traditionally, every year Ino had gone full-throttle with the makeup and pinned her hair up in elaborate styles with various pieces of decorative hair jewelry. This year, Ino had scaled back and was somehow more beautiful for it. There was a pale pink gloss adorning her lips and light makeup on her eyes, but her skin was otherwise natural. Adding to her natural beauty, Ino left her hair down, cascading down her back and framing the sides of her face in long, loose barrel curls. Shikamaru had always known Ino was lovely, but knowing the fact and actually noticing it were two completely different things.
He tore his gaze away from her to check Chouji's expression and felt more at ease seeing his buddy every bit as speechless as he was. Ino just had that effect on people, when she wanted to, and apparently even even life-long friends weren't immune to her.
Ino, of course, looked extremely pleased with their reactions.
"I took your advice this year, Shikamaru. So no complaints about me fixing my hair every five minutes, 'kay?"
He nodded dumbly, eyes skimming the full image of her once more. Why don't you quit doing all of that stuff to your hair? It takes forever, you have to fix it every five minutes, and only other girls notice anyway. From the looks of her now, it was the best damn advice he'd ever given her. If he'd known she was going to listen, he would've said something even earlier. Women.
Chouji extended a hand to help Ino down the two steps in front of her door. She didn't really need the help, but Chouji had become a gentleman over the years to make up for Shikamaru's apathy. Ino gave the both of them a quick look-over as she reached their side and, satisfied with the boys' appearence, the three companions walked to the heart of the village where music filled the air and people filled the streets.
For a while, the three of them joined a crowd watching miko perform the kagura dance. That is, until Ino's sweettooth demanded they visit the sweets stalls. Chouji branched off to see a deep-fry station and Ino bought herself some taikoyaki and some dango for Shikamaru, which he accepted with a frown. Ino knew full well he didn't like sweets and smiled deviously at him as she bit her treat. He'd have to toss his when she wasn't looking. Funny, how so much time had passed and yet there were moments when it felt like they were all still twelve. He could picture them at age fifty, battle-worn and graying hair, an impish old Ino still dragging him to festivals and buying him sweets. He looked around and counted five sets on hungry eyes zoomed in on Ino. Two of the guys already had girlfriends clinging to their arms.
Yeah, some things would never change.
The music playing died down and the crowds began to shift in different directions. Ino turned to shadow-nin excitedly.
"Shika, the fireworks are about to start! Go find Chouji and get us some sparklers, I'm going to go find us a spot."
He envied her, he really did. After a certain mission the InoShikaCho team had gone on some years back that ended in massive explosions, Shikamaru could never look at fireworks quite the same way again. He had his suspicions Chouji couldn't either, but Ino somehow managed not to have made the association between the launching of colored fire in the sky and the accidental destruction of a shelter holding civillians. Her eyes still shone like those of a person who'd never spilled blood, despite that being far from the truth, and he hoped they kept shining for as long as they could.
"Aa. Let us know when you find it."
He turned away from her, handing his sweets to a child passing by as his back disappeared into the crowd.
"Hyuuga-san, please have some of our karaage."
"Oh, Hyuuga-san! Would you like some of our toumorokoshi?"
"Here, taste our special yakitori recipe, Hyuuga-san."
The odd sensation of being treated like nobility was more overwhelming with each patron they passed offering free samples in exchange for a few seconds of their attention. Tenten's humble smile was starting to feel strained and she grew more self-aware as it became increasingly clear that any anonymity she used to have was extinct. It was...disturbing. Having her name known throughout Konoha had been Tenten's dream, and now she was definitely recognized all over the village. And it bothered her. Not because she was well-known, but because she was known as Hyuuga Tenten.
Being a member of the Hyuuga clan had eclipsed her personal identity entirely.
Few of the food vendors even remembered that she was once a kunoichi. Many never knew she was one in the first place. To the lot of them, she was simply the brown-eyed Hyuuga who'd obviously married into the clan. She wondered how many of them would recognize her were she not standing next to her husband. Tenten inclined her head to look up at Neji and he glanced back at her automatically, mildly curious at her sudden interest in his face. He lifted an eyebrow and her eyes lowered, shifting away from his. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied a stand selling blankets halfway down the street. With the crowd surging towards them in anticipation of the firework display, it would take a good couple of minutes to get there. Tenten perked up.
"Neji, go find us a spot. I'll get a blanket so we can sit down."
I'm sorry. I just need a little space right now. I'll be right back.
The lantern lights started to dim as the white-eyed jounin watched his wife blend into the crowd, a feeling of unease making him tense. He wasn't sure what, but something had wound Tenten up enough for her to retreat. Without him. He supposed that meant that she needed some time alone.
His eyes trailed away from the pale green of her kimono as he started to pay attention to the flow of human traffic, watching the people seperate and flock to the more common areas of viewing. He paid extra attention to the shinobi in attendance as they moved for locations inacessible to civillians but fully populated by other shinobi. Almost every comfortable position his eye landed on, there was a horde of people already there. The smallest group he could spot numbered in the dozens.
The hospital, academy, and administration roofs were full. The Hokage Tower was full. The Hokage monument was full. Any form of privacy would have to be bought with some creativity, and that meant forgetting about the taller, more open spots and looking for places that were smaller and more secluded. Places people didn't think of during festivals. Places that might hold dark memories.
The memory of the chuunin exams surfaced in Neji's mind and he instantly had an idea of where to go: the battle arena.
The open-roofed structure had imposing height, offered an unblocked view, and the sky could be watched either from a seat inside or the upper edge of the edifice. It was perfect. He walked up the side of it, pleased with his clever reasoning skills.
It seemed great minds thought alike.
A quarter of the way around from him was a sight he wasn't entirely prepared for. To come across someone else atop the battle arena was one thing, but Yamanaka Ino in all her ethereal glory and bathed in moonlight was something that could make even the most hardened of hearts waver. Neji was awestruck. Almost against his will his eyes devoured her, taking in the perfect picture she made framed by the night sky as if committing the image to memory. On a bad day Ino was pretty, that much was simple fact. At that moment in time however...she was the most hypnotic thing he'd ever laid eyes on. He couldn't have looked away even if he'd wanted to, focus training be damned.
Sensing eyes on her, Ino turned and beamed at the dazed prodigy.
"Aw, so much for my secret spot. You clean up nice! I think this is the first time I've seen you in something not splattered with blood."
His lips spread in a soft smirk. She was complimenting him? She had to know how good she looked, she was Ino after all; vanity incarnate. But he'd play along in her game if that was what she wanted, just for the moment. Just because he so rarely interacted with people outside of missions.
"Fishing for compliments?"
"Depends. You taking the bait?"
"Are you flirting with me, Yamanaka?"
"Are you joking with me, Hyuuga?"
"I asked first."
Ino laughed, caught up in the carefree atmosphere. She'd never known Neji to be so casual, never known this side of him existed. The superhuman Konoha warrior was human after all.
"You can't call that flirting, it's an insult to my skills. I could do much better."
She crossed her arms under her bust in a mock challenge daring him to say otherwise, but she was soon distracted as the first of the fireworks screamed through the air painting the sky in vivid bursts of color. Ino spun around to watch, no longer noticing the eyes that were still firmly locked on her.
You look lovely. The words dangled on the edge of his lips, but he caught himself before they could tumble out. He was getting carried away, off-duty or not Ino was still someone he often worked with and whom he needed to maintain a professional association. He had no business being so familiar with her. He had no business being so familiar with any woman; the blonde was getting far too comfortable with him. As if awakening from a daydream he snapped back to his senses. Why was he standing here with Ino instead of Tenten?
Tenten.
Upon remembering his wife he'd expected to feel guilty. Instead, he felt strangely guilt-free. She had wanted space and he was letting her have that space. There was nothing to be ashamed about from simply enjoying someone else's company in her absence.
...right?
A / N : Sorry for the obscene lateness, rewrote this chappie from scratch six times 'cause I wasn't happy (still feels patchwork-y). Anyway, I've been working on other chapters of Ricochet during the weeks I deprived you and I ended up adding even more chapters (in summarized form for now, of course) There is just SO much to this story, I was planning to have it finished by September, but now I'm thinking December at best. Right now, the total count is 24 chapters and a bonus/alternate ending. About this chapter: I tried to do a little more fleshing out of the NejiTen versus NejiIno dynamics so you could see how the relationships are different. All the festival terms can been wiki'd if you're not familiar with Japanese customs. Also, ch11 is written, so soon as I start and complete ch10 I'll post them simultaneously to make up for this chapter's lateness.