One night, when Neji was young and feeling particularly depressed about being a member of the Branch family, he ran out of the Hyuga compound and lay under a tree in the forest. The ground was hard and uncomfortable, but Neji didn't want to sleep anyways. He wanted to get away from it all. To just lie down in a place where the trees were free, where the ground was not Hyuga property, where the sky was unchained.
Nevertheless, he found himself getting a little sleepy, just lying there and staring up at the stars, and in a few minutes he was half dozing with his eyes just cracked open.
And then, a glint. A sparkle. Neji saw it dancing out of the corner of his eyes and it pestered him until he sat up and looked around. The gleam was from the knife of a girl practicing jutsu and knife throwing on the ground a few feet away.
She must not have noticed him, lying here in his dark nightclothes. He cleared his throat.
She glanced over. "I thought you were asleep." Her eyes on him were cool, measuring. He wondered why she didn't go back to her practice, and realized that of course, she must be waiting for him to speak. But he wasn't really sure what to say.
Finally, he asked, "Who are you?"
"Tenten."
One word that told him nothing. "No last name?"
"Not all of us rely on our families, Hyuga."
He was startled for a second, but then, she would know his family from his eyes-the byakugan. Or maybe they were in class together? Neji didn't keep track of names generally, and found that he was wishing he did.
In any case, he resented her last words. "I don't need my family. I am my own person."
She looked skeptical. "Are you really?"
He did not answer. Why should he have to argue with this…Tenten here anyways? What did she know about him?
"I don't believe you," she said flatly, and she twirled a kunai on one finger. "Everyone belongs to someone. To the people around them, the people who know them the best."
"Well, I don't belong to the Hyuga main branch."
Tenten smiled. "Then I guess that leaves you untaken."
"I guess."
"Excellent. Then, from now on you're mine. The other girls will be jealous; they all think you're cute, you know." With a satisfied smirk she turned and released the kunai from her finger, leaving it sticking it into a tree.
Neji blinked. "Wait, what?" Tenten was ignoring him, pulling out another knife. "You can't just say I'm yours!" She threw this one too, and it stuck an inch from the first kunai. "There is no reason on Earth why I would belong to you!"
She turned back to him with a worried frown. "You know, you have a point there."
"Of course I do. You're a random girl who I met on a random night throwing random knives into a random tree. You have no relation to me, or at best a very thin connection."
She stepped closer, making almost no noise. Leaves cushioned her feet. She leaned down until her face was about an inch from his. He wanted to shrink away from her, but stared straight up into her eyes, challenging her to dispute his response.
She kissed him on the cheek.
What?
What?
No one had kissed Neji for years. Not since his father had died and left him in a family that did not love or care for him. And even before that, his father was not a girl. And his lips had been firm and usually tired and protective, not soft and mocking and warm.
Tenten stepped away. Her face was hidden by darkness, but he could hear the smugness in her voice. "Now I am the girl who stole your first kiss. It was your first one, right?"
It was.
His silence was answer enough for Tenten. "Then you belong to me now," she said.
He was still trying to get a grip on reality. The trees seemed to merge in the shadows and he'd just been kissed and he was tired and he really didn't have enough energy to deal with this tonight. Tenten might have sensed this, because she patted his shoulder and walked away.
Two knives were left stuck in the tree, sparkling in the moonlight.
AN: So...When I wrote this story (a while ago) I did not plan for it to go quite this direction, but it did. I worry that they might both be a little OOC...