A/N: Thanks for the input on how I'm doing. Ah, I knew this would happen, -tragic shake of head-. I'm turning this fic into a SasuSaku --; (But not on purpose! I swear it on my foot!) Thanks for letting me know ahead of time so I can get back on track. Everything I write seems to head in the SasuSaku direction, but darnit, I WILL write NejiTen!
And yes, they are all pretty much the same age in this fiction. Tenten is slightly older than the other girls, but not quite a year.
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Day 10
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"I'm bored," Ino complained for the fifth time in less than fifteen minutes. Tenten sighed in exasperation and threw down her novel face down on the bunk, knowing full well that it was horrible for the spine.
"Then do something!" she exclaimed, glaring at the blonde.
Ino glared right back at Tenten. "Like what?"
"Well, read a book." Tenten gestured to her own source of entertainment. Guiltily, she noticed the spine already developing a fold line down the middle. Ino did that bridge-of-the-nose wrinkling thing again, and shook her head.
"Fiction's nothing but a bunch of lies. Why should I waste my time reading it?" She picked up Tenten's book as if it were a bag of dog dung, and glanced at the title.
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. So typical of you," she sighed, and flung it back at Tenten.
As soon as Hinata had nervously accepted Sakura's offer to go down the street for a smoothie together, Tenten had known that it would be a bad idea to leave her and Ino alone in a small room together. She tried to remind herself that she had withstood this before the arrival of Sakura, but somehow, three pests seemed better than just one. At least Sakura kept Ino occupied.
Tenten set the book on the bedside table, and flicked the back of Ino's head. All of her silvery-blonde hair was pulled up into a high ponytail.
"Stop it!" she swatted at Tenten.
"Why didn't you just go out with them?" Tenten whined. She hadn't been able to whine to anybody for a long time, and it was making her cranky. She knew it was probably because of all the caffeine she had drank last night, from the coffee machine downstairs in front of the check-in desk, but she didn't really care.
"Because, smoothies are horrible for your health," Ino chided. Tenten raised her eyebrows.
"Smoothies are made of fruit. If that's bad for your health, then what's steak?"
"Chewing fruit burns more calories than just sipping mashed up strawberries, like you're eating baby food or something. It's absolutely gross." Ino shook her head, and primly clasped her fingers together. "I don't see how you people can stand it." She paused. "Then again, I don't suppose you guys would count as 'people'. Not normal ones, anyways."
"Oh, yeah? Then what are your friends like, if we're so weird?" Tenten demanded indignantly. Ino's standards of normal must be pretty warped.
Ino pursed her lips and paused for just a second before rattling on. "My friends are absolutely gorgeous. They understand me, and they actually want to go on shopping sprees, and they…they…" She sighed, and deflated. "Of course, now that I'm stuck here, I won't be seeing much of them."
"Hey, don't look at me. I didn't force you to come here," Tenten snorted, and rolled over.
"Where are you going?" Ino asked, surprised, as Tenten stuffed her feet into the ever-muddy Nikes. Tenten shoved a 20 into her pocket, which Ino eyed with envy, (the pink-obsessed girl was almost flat broke).
"Where do you think? I have to work," Tenten grumbled.
O0O
She entered the now familiar office building with a sick ton of dread in the pit of her stomach.
The Hyuuga Compound was pretty unpleasant in itself, but the office building was worse, by all means. It was way too cold: the air conditioning was turned up to frigid. Tenten wouldn't have been surprised if she rounded a corner to see icicles hanging from the ceiling. God, it wasn't really that hot outside, was it?
Yumi bumped into her as she made her way up to the correct floor. Her artificially pretty face lit up with false surprise. "Tenten! You're early!" Is that really so hard to believe?
Tenten tried for a smile, and found herself instead jutting her buckteeth out over her lower lip. Yumi's smile faltered a little. She took a crunching bite of the blood red apple she was holding in one of her red-talon hands.
"You know where to go," she said after Tenten stood there staring at her while she chewed. Tenten sighed, and pushed past her towards the file room.
She had barely made it in before somebody spoke behind her.
"Hello."
She felt a shiver of goose bumps go up her neck before she nearly jumped out of her skin.
"HYUUGA NEJI do NOT do that to me!!" A few passing workers paused to stare at her as she clutched her heart, her eyes staring widely at Neji. He seemed indifferent enough to her reaction. He cocked his head slightly, though it was a stiff gesture.
"I apologize for frightening you."
"I'm not scared." She coughed, and swallowed a wad of saliva. "Okay. Well. Maybe a little," she admitted. She waved him into the room.
"Clean," he noted, eyeing the empty floor.
"Yeah. That's 'cause I haven't started yet for the day," she replied, pulling out a drawer from the metal file cabinets. It made a satisfying swooshing sound. She began pulling out files helter skelter. He moved to help her, taking them from her and setting them neatly on a table. She smiled in gratefulness.
"Thanks. You're really organized, Neji-kun."
"Hn."
He swiftly stacked a pile of folders into a neat stack, and set them in a corner so that he could start a new pile.
"Are you here for…therapy?" she asked slightly awkwardly, pausing to peek at his reaction. His hands didn't stop sorting the files, though his shoulders tensed slightly.
"Hn."
"Oh. With who?"
"A woman with blonde hair."
"…okay."
Tenten hadn't seen any ladies with blonde hair around, at least not psychologists. She wondered who it could be. Neji didn't seem like he liked talking about this sort of thing, so she shut up. All they could hear for a little while was the slight rubbing sound of manila envelope against paper. She coughed loudly, but it made the silence worse.
At last, the paper sound stopped for a moment, and then a minute, and then five. At last, she looked around to see Neji lounging in the chair, holding a cup of black coffee in his right hand. Her face automatically twisted into a smile. She had never heard him leave to go get coffee.
"Mind if I sit?"
"Hn."
She sat down in the swivel chair opposite him on the table, eyeing the coffee. So Neji was a fellow caffeine lover? Well, it made him that much more likeable. She smiled wider at him. He took a sip of the coffee. White smoke curled in elegant tendrils around his nose and over his head.
"Is that hot?" she asked finally.
"Yes, it is very hot," he said flatly, taking another sip.
"Did you put any cream in? It tastes much better that way."
"No."
"Not even sugar?"
"No." He looked at her, a confused expression on his face. "Why would I want to put in sugar or cream? The best medicines are bitter."
"Yeah…but this is coffee," she said, staring at the ominous-looking black liquid inside the cup. It seemed much more scary now that she knew that the stuff was pure black coffee. No sweetening.
He shrugged. "Coffee is good for the spirit."
Tenten laughed, even though she wasn't really sure if he was actually joking or not. "Yeah. I guess you could say that. The same way that chocolate chip cookies and cold milk are good for you."
He took a long drag of the coffee, and slid the cup across the table towards her. "Would you like some?" The cup was more than halfway full. Tenten had never minded sharing cups with anybody. It wasn't something that bothered her. But she was really, really afraid to drink that black coffee.
"Uh. No, thanks."
"Alright." He didn't seem like he cared. He left the cup where it was, close enough so that she could feel the heat coming through the Styrofoam onto her forearm. It made the little hairs on her skin stand up on end. She warily eyed the contents while he waited for her to say something, anything at all. She couldn't think of anything.
At last, randomly because it was the first thing that popped into her head, she said, "What's your favorite color?" She had been thinking about Ino and her pink obsession. She very much hoped that Neji did not have a pink obsession. After all, he did have the hair.
He paused, a you-are-the-one-that-needs-therapy kind of pause. Tenten mentally slapped herself.
"White."
"White?" she said in surprise. Of all colors…damn it all, white wasn't even a color! Wasn't it like a form of light…or something like that? Along with black? She shook her head at him. "White?" she repeated. "Why?"
"White is clean. White is pure. White is simple," he said slowly, drawing out the words. "White helps me think. It is restful. Not loud, like this world." He waved towards the direction of the door, a slightly annoyed expression on his face.
"Oh." Tenten thought. She kind-of understood what he meant. Maybe white wasn't that bad. "I get it. Sort of."
"You?" he said. He reached across the table and took the coffee back. His knuckle brushed against her arm. It felt dry, and callused, and kind of scaly. His skin was so chapped that the lines stood out, making it rough. She drew back her arm automatically, an involuntary shiver running down her spine. He was so creepy.
"Me…what?" she finally realized he had asked her something.
"You. Your favorite color," he repeated calmly, patiently. She could never be that patient.
"Well. Uh…I don't know." She shrugged. "I never actually gave it much thought. I like everything." She paused for consideration. "Except pink, of course."
"Pink…?"
"Yeah." She rolled her eyes. "This girl Ino that's my roommate? She has an obsession with pink. Everything she owns has to be pink: her bedding, her clothes, even her toothbrush. It's a bit…distracting, if you get what I mean."
He didn't look like he got what she meant, and he didn't look like he cared either. She sighed. She sounded so mean, talking about Ino like she was some sort of freak. Wait a minute, who was she to complain? Ino was a freak. Neji was a freak. Tenten, most likely, was also a freak.
Did this make her a hypocrite?
"Your nails are long," he said flatly.
She glanced down automatically at her fingers. Sure enough, her nails were so long that they were about to split. Her mother had painted her nails bright red for her a while back, and the white nail poked through above the chipping polish.
"Yeah, maybe I need to cut them," she noted. No need to mention that she didn't have any clippers.
Maybe he read it in her face, (she was beginning to realize that Neji was very good at reading people), but he scrutinized her nails more carefully. He pulled a pair of golden clippers out of his pocket. She looked up in surprise. "Cut them."
"Now?" she said. What type of person carries nail clippers in their pocket? Tenten, get out of here…the guy's a loony!
"Yes." He nodded and sat back to watch her cut her nails. She sighed, and started to clip.
O0O
"How was work?" Ino asked in a bored voice once Tenten got back. She was lying on her back, reading a copy of GL magazine on the bed, her tongue sticking out from between her lips.
"…Interesting," Tenten sighed, pulling off her shoes. Sakura and Hinata were playing Scrabble, (once again, with her board), on the ground. It was good to see that Hinata was feeling a bit more comfortable.
"Hah! I just spelled humuhumunukunukuapuaa!" Sakura declared in triumph.
"…Is that a word?" said Ino.
"That's an impossibility," Tenten declared, going over to see anyways. Sure enough, Sakura had spelled out the Hawaiian name for a triggerfish. Hinata was staring at the board, and then at Sakura, as if they were gods.
"You p-play very w-well, Sakura-san," she praised the pink-haired girl. Sakura flipped back her hair and pulled it into a ponytail, tying it with a black ribbon. Strand fell out of the ponytail to frame her face.
"Yeah, well, I've been playing for a long time. It wasn't fair for me to play against you," she admitted. Tenten gaped at them.
Sakura…was being…modest? Hm. And she was being nice to Hinata to boot!
Ino sat up, her blue eyes looking dejected. "God, this place is depressing," she complained. Sakura rolled her eyes, and Hinata looked down. Tenten pretended nobody had spoken.
"Hey, I have an idea," Ino said, getting up from the bed to come over and join them sitting on the floor. "Let's play a game of Truth or Dare."
"Truth or Dare?" Tenten asked warily.
"Yeah," Ino said, a challenging glint in her eye. "Or are you chicken?"
Of course, Sakura never backed down from a challenge.
O0O
They ate a dinner of ham and cheese sandwiches with carrots. At seven O' clock that night, they sat in a circle on the floor, each sitting on a sleeping bag and wrapped in a fleece blanket.
Ino had put a flashlight in the middle of their ring so that the circle of light shone on the ceiling, and also a bowl of grapes, a larger bowl of popcorn, and four Capri suns.
Tenten took a long, bubbly-sounding draw from her drink, snuggling deeper into her army green sleeping bag and wrapping the dark blue and green striped fleece blanket around her shoulders. Hinata's white eyes seemed to glow in the light of the flashlight, and Sakura's teeth were biting into her lip. Ino was the only one that seemed unfazed by the prospect of a no-rules Truth or Dare.
"I'll go first," Ino said. Nobody challenged her. Nobody wanted to step into the spotlight.
She turned to Sakura. "Okay. Spill everything about you and the Uchiha baby."
"That's not a question," Sakura said stiffly.
Ino rolled her eyes. "Fine. What are your feelings for him?" She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively, as if this were something really dishy. (In her opinion, it probably was.)
Sakura sighed, and wiped back a loose strand of hair with a piece of her red plaid fleece blanket.
"I've already told you. I don't love him."
"Oh, stop lying. This is Truth or Dare, remember? Anybody with two eyes in their head could see that there's chemistry between you two," Ino prodded eagerly. Sakura shook her head and sighed again.
"Well, if that's what you insist on believing, then suit yourself."
Ino pouted. "Say what you really feel about him."
Sakura put her face in her hands. "I swear, Ino-pig, you are going to make my ears bleed. Is my love life the only thing of interest to you?"
"As of this moment, yes."
"Alright, we did go out a few times. Are you happy?"
Ino gasped as if somebody had stabbed her. "Are you serious?!" She squealed, and made as if to hug Sakura, but the pink-haired girl scooted away just in time, so that Ino looked like she had just made an odd sideways bow before coming back up into a sitting position.
"Yes. It wasn't anything…boyfriend-girlfriend-ish, though, not anything you'd find interesting," Sakura explained calmly.
"Yeah, right. Any date with a boy is a romantic date," Ino corrected.
"So what would you call me and Lee, the hot item of the year?" Tenten asked sarcastically. Even Hinata let out a small giggle at this one.
"Okay, so I see your point," Ino said, "But Uchiha Sasuke hardly seems like the type of guy who would want to make friends. Therefore, it must have been a boy-girl type date, am I right?"
"No, you're wrong," Sakura said flatly. "You've already used up your turn. It's my turn now."
"Aw, Forehe-"
"It's my turn."
Ino fell silent at the deadly menace in Sakura's tone.
"Fine. Sheesh."
"Now…Tenten."
Tenten gulped. Oh, God. What had she gotten herself into? Then again, it couldn't be that bad, could it? She had barely known these girls for a week. They couldn't ask anything that they knew would be embarrassing for her. She relaxed a little.
"Have you ever kissed a boy?" Sakura laughed devilishly. "And if more than one, who was the best kisser?"
Tenten exhaled. This one, at least, would not cost her any pride. "No, I have never kissed anybody, and I don't plan on planting one of anybody anytime soon." Ino pouted, Sakura didn't seem like she had been listening, and Hinata's face was flaming red in the light of the flashlight.
"Well, that sucks," Ino muttered.
"I haven't seen you doing much kissing," Tenten argued defensively.
"Not that you know of," Ino muttered, again mostly to herself. Tenten chose to ignore her this time.
"Hey, what about that Neji boy that you're always complaining about?" Sakura suddenly mentioned.
"What about him?" Tenten paused. "Wait. When have I ever complained about him?"
"You talk in your sleep," Ino sniggered.
"Why don't you kiss him?" Sakura suggested.
"S-Sakura-san!" Hinata gasped. "Neji-nii-san is b-betrothed!"
"Really? To who?" Sakura asked with sudden interest.
"A-Ano…"
"To Hinata," Tenten said firmly. "And I'm going to stop them from getting married if it's the last thing I do."
"Aren't they cousins?" said Ino, glancing at Hinata.
"Yes. Exactly."
"Well…what better way to stop the wedding than to get Neji to fall in love with you?" Ino said slowly, as if an idea were forming in her head. Tenten didn't like that tone at all. She scooted unconsciously a little closer to Hinata and further from Ino.
"I don't think so. I stay single," Tenten said stubbornly. "I don't believe in playing with other people's feelings for bets, or whatever this is."
"But it's not a bet that's going to hurt him! By making Neji fall in love with you, you could get Neji and Hinata both out of a problem!" Ino argued.
"Ino, I'm not going to do it," Tenten insisted.
"Think about it, okay?" Ino pleaded.
"No."
"You will. You already dream about him at night. Think how cute it would be if you guys got together!" Ino gushed.
"I don't dream about him," Tenten argued, who happened to remember exactly what she had dreamed about last night. She paused. "Okay, so I do dream about him. But not in the way that you would think. I had a nightmare that I went to the office in my underwear, and then Neji poured coffee so hot over my head that I melted into a puddle. And then Yumi ate me."
Ino, Sakura, and Hinata all stared at her with bug eyes.
"Oooookaaayy…"
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A/N: Lol, hope you enjoyed this one!