~Give me Love~

~Chapter 4~

After the traversing the labyrinth of the caverns, the forest was a piece of cake. They even managed to get back to Konoha before dawn, to which Shino was very thankful. In the early hours of the morning, Shino was free to bring his mysterious cargo back to his living quarters without the danger of prying eyes. Not that anyone else could actually see his cargo, but the fact that he looked like he was carrying something when there was clearly nothing may have raised some unwanted questions.

Hinata had peacefully dozed off halfway through the journey, but awoke to the sound of a door unlocking and creaking open. She heard the flick of a light switch, and buzz of an overhead light struggling to light up a strange little room.

It was a cheap, dim, cluttered, but oddly organized studio apartment. There were shelves and tables and bookcases against every wall, each stacked with hundreds upon hundreds of little glass boxes filled with twigs, dirt, and leaves. There were piles of well-used notebooks stacked up in the corners, with unfamiliar labels like "Mantodea" and "Lucanidae." In some of the notebooks that were flopped open, there were mad scrawlings and illustrations. In the corner was a sad futon with a single sheet and a soggy pillow, also scattered with notes, and in the opposite corner was a dingy kitchen piled with leftover bowls of noodles. The place stunk of nature and craziness.

After staring in bewilderment at her surroundings, Hinata found herself being laid gently on the futon.

"Sorry for the mess, I'm not accustomed to visitors." Shino said dismissively.

Hinata said nothing. Compared to the extravagant walls of pure elegance she was used to in Sky Castle, this place was so puzzling that she had a hard time wrapping her head around someone even being able to reside in it.

Shino ambled his way over to the filthy cranny designated as his kitchen and opened a tiny refrigerator that was so cheap it didn't even have a light in it.

"You want anything to drink? Water? Beer? I've got maybe a swallow full of this pomegranate juice left," he said while pulling out a questionable carton of something.

"Um...n-no thank you," Hinata sputtered awkwardly.

"I guess your kind doesn't drink or eat human food..." he thought out-loud while gulping down the last of what was in the mysterious carton.

"Oh...no...we do. I mean...yes, we eat. Earth food. We can eat it." Hinata's cheeks flared. Something about this place just filled her with anxiety. She almost wished she was back in the cave...at least that place had room.

Shino made his way back over to her, then pulled a stool over and took a seat. He then proceeded to pull off his goggles, toss them onto a nearby desk, then run a hand through his swept back hair. Once he opened his eyes, he stared straight into Hinata's with a piercing intensity. His eyes were solid, abysmal black. Hinata stared back at him wide-eyed and terrified with her own hazy pair.

"So. What am I going to have to do to get you out of my hair?"

Hinata gulped hard. "I...I...I don't know. This has never happened before...m..maybe if I...went to a rooftop or something, my...my cousin...my cousin could find me and come pick me up."

"Hmm."

Hinata looked down at herself. She was still cloaked by Shino's coat, and her dress was still ripped into embarrassingly revealing shreds.

"Do you...m-maybe...have a sewing kit? So...I can..."

"Mm. I do, but it's only for sewing small things like buttons. I don't think it would be enough to fix your dress. Hang on..."

With that, Shino got up and disappeared into a closet that Hinata hadn't noticed before. There was so much to look at, she was discovering new pieces of his apartment everywhere she looked. She got distracted looking at a poster of a cross-section of some type of beetle when a big wad of cloth smacked her in the face.

"You can have that for the time being. I rarely wear it, and it should be big enough to cover you."

Hinata pulled the cloth out of her face and lifted it up by the corners. It was an over-sized, grey turtleneck sweater. It would probably function as a sweater on someone as tall as Shino, but for little doll-like Hinata, it could serve as an actual full-body garment.

"Um...do you have a room I can ch-change in?"

"Not really. You can change right there, I don't care."

Hinata flushed bright red. "I...I...'

Shino sighed at took a seat at a desk across the room, facing away from her.

"I won't look."

He then began scribbling in one of the strewn about notebooks. Hinata gave his back a skeptical look, but then she went ahead and unfastened the remnants of her kimono. She kept her eye on Shino as she became more and more vulnerable to him, making sure he wasn't coping a peek like the pervert he probably was. Yet, even with his back turned, she still felt as if hundreds of eyes were looking at her now bare, porcelain skin.

Hurriedly, she shuffled into the sweater and pulled it over herself. Even though it carried the stench of being in a closet for a year, it was very cozy, and was long enough to cover the majority of her thighs. The sleeves were so long, only her fingers stuck out of the openings. The turtleneck itself was so big it covered Hinata's mouth.

"Okay, you c-can look now." she said meekly.

Shino turned around, and as his eyes fell upon her, Hinata saw the corner of his mouth curl into the most subtle of smiles.

"Well, that works pretty well for you, doesn't it?"

"Um...almost..." she said, while turning her back towards him. Her wings were jutting out uncomfortably under the fabric.

Shino did something then that Hinata never expected. He actually chuckled. Doing so made it harder for him to hide his smile, and seeing that curl of his lips made him look...well, should she even admit it? He looked downright welcoming. Even...handsome. Hinata was almost about to smile back, when he pulled out a small knife from his boot and made his way over to her. Hinata backed away a bit in defense, holding an arm over herself. Shino placed a warm hand on her shoulder and applied a gentle force to face her away from him.

"You're like a common Lepidoptera."

"A what?!" She cried in panic, as she felt the knife against her back. A couple of rips later, and the pressure on her wings was lifted. He faced her towards him again, holding the knife, now dotted with strings of fabric.

"A moth. They're known for destroying your cloths. Which is what you're doing to mine."

"I...I'm sorry..." she whimpered.

Shino sheathed his knife back in his boot, then reached his arm out, placed a hand on her head, then ruffled her hair.

"It's fine. I've always hated that sweater anyway. One of my team mates gave it to me for Christmas, and I don't care for his taste in clothing."

Hinata said nothing, but continued to stare up at him, waiting for his next move.

"Anyway, it's getting late. Why don't you get some sleep, and in the morning I'll take you to the tallest building I know and we'll see if we can get your feathered friends to come pick you up?"

"Okay...but...where are you going to sleep?"

He smirked. "I don't need to. I can catch up on some research while you rest."

Hinata's eyes widened. "Are...are you sure? That's not very healthy to stay awake..."

"Don't worry about it, I do it all the time."

Hinata pursed her lips, but didn't feel like arguing about it. She was very tired, and she was looking forward to going home. The sooner she was out of this bug-ridden bachelor pad, the better. Without another word, she laid down on the futon, and shut her eyes. She felt Shino pull the one sheet over her, then heard him walk over to the other side of the room and resume his scribbling.

She opened her eyes once more, staring at his back.

"Um...Shino-kun?" she asked shyly.

"Mmm."

"Thank you...again...for everything."

"Sure. You rest now little Ga-chan."

Annoying Bird. Your Kind. Troublesome. That's what he had called her, she thought to herself. He had been so hostile to her, and she had understood why. Yet, despite dragging him into the depths of a cave and wasting his time, he had cared for her. He set her wing, he cleaned her face, he kept her warm. Hinata had wondered if she was simply a wounded animal to him, that she would have received the same treatment if she was nothing more than a sparrow that had a bad encounter with a window. But now here she was, on a flop-house futon surrounded by stacks of notebooks and bug boxes, wrapped in a sweater that he had personally ruined just for her. She had even seen him smile at her. Before going back to his research, he called her "Little Moth."

She wouldn't have exactly referred to that as a term of endearment, but when "Little Moth," escaped his lips, it was not laced with hostility like the other terms had. Hinata had meant to sleep, but she couldn't stop staring at the man working before her. She found it funny actually, as she had fully expected to keep herself awake thinking about the implications of tomorrow and how her bow was missing and her dress was destroyed and how she had only tagged forty-nine couples instead of fifty, and how she spent the night in a weird human's house and how her wing was broken.

But her mind didn't even graze against those thoughts. The entire night, her head was filled with Shino.

~End of Chapter 4~