A/N: -wakes up from hibernation and blinks at mob of angry people with pitchforks- Um.
Needless to say, school started, and then there were mountains of homework and…and…it all went black after that.
If this chapter is off, it is because my mind is slowly deteriorating from waking up at six AM in the morning when I am CLEARLY not a morning person.
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Day 29
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Ino giggled a little more loudly than necessary, and practically panting down Sakura's neck, bent over to whisper into her ear in a very girly, conspiratorial manner. "He's looking at you," she breathed.
Sakura fixed her eyes on the ceiling and refused to acknowledge that she had heard Ino. Of course he was looking at her; she had to be the only person with pink hair for miles around. There was no way that she could easily blend into a crowd. And after all, Uchiha Sasuke had perfect eyesight. She was doomed from the start.
The two girls were sitting a small, circular table in a secluded, family-run café a few blocks from the boarding home. Tenten had recommended it to them a few days prior, saying that there was going to be a party in honor of the owner's birthday and all were welcome, and they had chosen to go out while Tenten was over at Neji's. Hinata was currently up placing their order, squeezing through the crowd.
From the moment that Sakura had walked in and spotted the familiar shock of ebony hair, she had carefully been distracting Ino from the corner of the shop where he sat. Naruto and Kiba were sitting with him, their backs to the girls' table. Nevertheless, she had no doubt in her mind that he knew she was there. The smirk twisting the corner of his mouth while he drawled something out to Naruto was proof.
The cherry-head did not want to talk to him at the moment. Doing so would make Ino squeal with joy, obviously. But Sakura was really not in the mood to put up with cynical Sasuke, the man-who-does-not-speak.
"Aren't you going to go over and say hi, at least?" Ino whined. "It's only polite."
Sakura snorted. Ino cared nothing for polite. At that moment, Hinata arrived with their steaming coffees in cups, and Sakura had an excuse to distract herself, singing her tongue on the burning liquid. The bass drum in the hip-hop song playing throbbed through the ground and pulsed through her feet. She was feeling a little bad about leaving Tenten out.
Ino tugged at her sleeve again. Sakura glared at the blonde. "Get off," she snapped in exasperation. Hinata giggled slightly at Ino's wounded expression.
At that moment, Tenten burst in through the front doors, multiple flyaway hairs sticking out in loops from her buns, her face flushed and what appeared to be lint stuck all over her clothes. There were mud splotches all over her legs, shoes, and pants from running through the wet. She ran over when she spotted the girls, all of them gaping a little at her haphazard appearance.
"God, what happened to you?" Sakura asked, glad for something to talk about besides Sasuke Uchiha.
Tenten grinned. "It's a pretty long story. It started with a hug and ended with Hiashi finding me on top of Neji and assuming the worst."
Ino blinked. "How the hell did you get out alive?"
"Well, Hiashi was ranting and raving and his face was all purple. I thought he was going to choke if he kept at it. But he at least got Neji and me unstuck—"
"Wait, you were stuck on top of Neji?" Ino laughed. "For how long?"
"Like an hour. Anyways, Hiashi rolled me out of the blanket—"
"And you were in a blanket too? No wonder he assumed the worst," Ino laughed again. Her face paled. "Wait, he wasn't right, was he?" she gasped.
Tenten's faced turned faintly green. "Just for that, I will kill you with your own meat cleaver. Yes, woman, I know where it is."
Ino scowled. "Fine, fine."
"I told Hiashi what had happened and I don't think he believed me, but Neji told him the same thing and Neji never lies, so Hiashi probably takes his word for it. So he let me escape after he questioned me on all of these random things: like who I lived with and what my parents did for a living, and what school I went to, and what sort of grades I got. He never bothered with that stuff in the beginning. Maybe Yumi put him up to it. I'll never know. But then he let me go with this really odd expression on his face. It was pretty weird."
Tenten finally sat down and grabbed the extra mug of coffee that the girls had ordered (just in case she turned up). She glanced around the room while Ino chattered about the possible implications of Hiashi's questionnaire to Sakura and Hinata. She blinked and made sure her eyes weren't fooling her.
"Um, is that Uchiha in the corner? With Naruto?"
There was a pause while Sakura gave Tenten a look that could have curdled milk and Ino and Hinata burst into amused laughter.
O0O
The party was over relatively early for what was supposed to be an all-nighter event. The streetlamps were already on, but the sky wasn't yet fully black. Ino and Tenten were now arguing about what qualified a guy as your boyfriend. Ino was saying that Neji definitely qualified as Tenten had already been on top of him. Tenten was bright red and insisting that, no, it did not matter, because neither of them liked the other in that one and besides, nothing had happened.
Hinata was sort of listening and half-sleeping as she walked next to the other two. She, as a natural morning person, was not used to staying up so late into the night. Her eyes were drooping as she nodded along whenever Tenten made a good point, trying not to drop dead on the spot from exhaustion.
Sakura hung back from the trio a little, strolling along with her hands jammed in the pockets of her black overalls. She was feeling pretty angry with the world at the moment, and for no particular reason. Pebbles skittered across the sidewalk as she kicked them out of her way, scuffing her shoes on the concrete.
"Hey." He put his hand on her shoulder, the long white fingers clenching a little tighter than necessary. She refused to look around and attempted to shrug him off, but he wasn't letting go. Bothersome. She ground her teeth.
"Let go."
He chuckled under his breath. "Why?"
"I'll scream."
The other white hand slid easily over her mouth. "Anything else?"
For answer she nailed her heel straight into his toe and ground into it as hard as she could, but he didn't so much as flinch. She growled in agitation and attempted to bite him. By then, Hinata had turned around and noticed that Sakura was being kept hostage by none other than Uchiha Sasuke. She stared with wide eyes, unsure of what to do.
Sasuke, noticing her as if for the first time, grinned, revealing sharp canines. He released Sakura easily and stuck his hands in his pockets as if nothing had occurred. Sakura spat and shot daggers at him with her glare. "Another time, perhaps," he murmured under his breath, the devilish grin widening.
"No, now would be fine. We'll just leave you two alone," Ino called from down the street. Tenten sighed and put her head in her hands. There was no reigning in that blonde.
Hinata looked unsure as she looked from Sasuke to Sakura. "Um. Don't be home too late, alright?" she said at last to the pink-haired girl, and then quickly escaping to Ino and Tenten.
"Traitors," Sakura muttered.
Sasuke gripped her hand and dragged her out of the lamplight and down a side alley where it was dark enough so that she could barely see the outline of his face and the silhouette of his jagged hair. She could feel the rough texture of a brick wall rubbing slightly against her left arm.
"I'm not in the mood to hang out with you," she said glumly, having exhausted her supply of venom for the night. The bad mood was fading now.
"Hn. Does it matter?" Sasuke said softly. He let go of her hand.
"Yes, it does," Sakura said fiercely. "You're not allowed to just randomly kidnap me and drag me down alleys!"
Sasuke shrugged. "It makes little difference whether or not I am allowed." He turned to stare at her like he was inspecting a piece of meat. She clenched her hands into fists.
"Bastard," she hissed.
He let out a dark laugh. "Hn. I don't deny it."
When she responded with a frosty silence, he caged her against the wall with his arms and stared down at the top of her pink hair. "Why so bitter?" he murmured.
She scowled. "Just leave me alone and go do whatever freaky things you do at night, okay?"
She stiffened when he made an abrupt movement and leaned down, pressing his lips gently to hers. It wasn't at all like he had used to kiss her before he had vanished, hard and brutal and terrifying. It was gentle and a little lonely. Strangely, it scared her all the way through.
Sakura tangled her fingers in his hair and tugged. Sasuke took the hint and pulled away, but remained close to her, so close that her eyes crossed a little trying to focus on his face. "Don't," she whispered. "Please, just don't."
His fingers stroked gently against her neck. "Why?" he breathed. His black eyes seemed to reflect all of the hardships and trials that he had endured over the past few years. They swam with sadness and grief. He blinked, and in a moment what she thought she had seen was gone again.
"I don't know," she replied in a small whisper, and despite her words, she pressed herself a little closer to him as a chilling wind blew through. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his nose into her hair.
"Hn."
O0O
Tenten had just had an epiphany.
Next to Naruto and her mother, Neji was probably the closest real friend that she had had in her entire life. In context, that seemed a pretty sad fact, but it rang with undeniable, completely unavoidable truth.
But Neji sort-of got her in a way that Naruto didn't, (not because he didn't care about Tenten, but mostly because Naruto didn't consider that sort of thing to be too important to life in general). Naruto loved Tenten and Tenten loved Naruto, but they had never really had huge philosophical talks or anything of the sort.
So if Neji and her understood each other so well, and she didn't really want to chuck fireballs at his head anymore for being so damn cynical, and so maybe he was too quiet, and…
Basically, Tenten had a small epiphany and decided that Neji was officially her friend. (And Tenten was a girl, and girls have to decide these things officially). The word really sounded pretty strange paired with his name.
This called for another visit! (Although, would Neji really be expecting her so soon? And would he actually want to talk after that whole mortifying blanket episode? Well, there was only one way to find out.)
Neji wasn't in his room again when she knocked on his door. After waiting around on the step for a while, Tenten went around to the front door, where thankfully an unknown cousin of Neji's answered the door and not Hiashi. The woman graciously informed Tenten that Neji was eating with his uncle and he would be with her momentarily. Tenten thanked her and found her way to Neji's room, managing to only run into a dead end two times before arriving there.
It took twenty minutes before Neji opened his door, (it didn't make a sound as it opened; freshly oiled hinges, of course) and raised his eyebrows at her sheepish expression. "Back so soon?" he said in a flat tone, coming to sit down. She laughed as he was about to sit next to her, thought better of it in light of the recent blanket episode, and took a seat in his usual seat across.
"Yeah. I had an epiphany," she said, grinning. It sounded like a pretty strange reason to be visiting him. But wasn't she has friend-therapist-interrogator-jailer? Wasn't it her responsibility to visit him? After all, Neji, as much as she saw of him, seemed to have little to no friends besides herself.
And she was his friend! A real, live, talking friend!
"I'm your friend!" she voiced out loud, and waited for a reaction. It began to sound rather stupid as seconds ticked by and all Neji did was stare at her like she was a very small child, his white eyes expressionless.
"So it would seem," he finally said in a slow voice. "Anything else?"
Tenten deflated. "Isn't that important? That I'm your actual friend? Friends hang out and tell each other secrets and let each other cry on their shoulders!"
"I am not going to inform you of my personal information," Neji said flatly. "And you may not weep on my shoulder. In any world."
Tenten laughed. It did sound kind of ridiculous for her to be the sobbing damsel-in-distress.
"True. We don't conform to the normal definition, do we?"
"Of course not," Neji said matter-of-factly. "Normal is overrated."
Tenten blinked. "Neji! You made a joke!"
O0O
"Karin," the white-haired man cooed. "I need a favor."
The redhead pretended to be busily stacking menus in a pile. The curry restaurant was deserted; the recent spell of very hot weather had driven all of the customers away. Besides, it was pitch dark outside, the color of black coffee, and nobody in their right mind would be wanting curry at this hour.
"What kind of favor?" she murmured in a quiet voice, so very unlike her usual loud tone. She pushed her black-rimmed glasses up the frame of her nose and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Oh, the simple kind," Suigetsu drawled, coming around the counter to wrap his arms around her waist. She was sure that he felt it when her spine stiffened.
"You have to tell me before I agree," she growled, pushing his arms away.
Suigetsu rolled his eyes. "Nothing too bad. I need for you to talk to your friend, that Tenten girl with the buns."
"What about?" Karin raised her fiery-colored eyebrows.
"Ask her where her boyfriend's from. I have a bone to pick with him."
"Boyfriend?" Karin furrowed her eyebrows. "Tenten?"
"A guy with white eyes. I'm sure he won't be too hard to find," Suigetsu said in a low voice. "I think there's some family on the other side of town with eyes like that. Get it out of her somehow, when she comes down for food. Let me know."
He came towards her again and pulled her close to him, and this time she didn't resist. He wound his hands into her red hair and kissed her gently, so very unlike his usual rough caresses. Puzzled, she tugged slightly at his hair and he parted from her.
"Something wrong?" he asked in a husky voice.
She hesitated, looking at him hard. "No. Nothing at all," she said finally.
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A/N: Please review!!