A/N: You might be wondering why I'm updating so early, and all I have to say is that I got a little excited about this chapter and decided o update before I reach twenty reviews. This is a pretty long chappie.
Enjoy.
...
The sun shining through the window paralleled its way through the blinds and onto her closed eyelids. She opened them from a long deserving night's sleep. Waking up, she sat up when she noticed that this room, these sheets, this bed, they weren't hers.
"Oh, right," she said, voice raspy, "I'm married." After Neji had told her that they were married, they had decided on residing in one another's condos every other week for school/work purposes until they filed an official annulment. They stopped by her place to pick up her things, and she'd braved the night in the Hyuuga's home. They were to hide under the radar for as long as possible. She sighed, tousling her hair, "How could a blind date do this much? Ino, you are SO dead!" She dropped back onto the sheets that smelled amazingly like Neji. "At least he smells good, unlike others."
Suddenly, her cell rang, bringing her back to her senses abruptly. "Hello?"
"Tenten!" Speaking of which...
Sitting up on her elbows, the brunette was alert. "Ino!"
"What the fuck happened? Did I just get married?"
"..." She was caught up in the scent of what seemed to be breakfast wafting in from the door.
"Hello? Tenten! Crisis here! I'm married to a complete and total lazy ass here!" Ino screamed angrily.
"Yeah, uh, I just had to, um... Think." She smelled bacon in the air, along with the sweet scent of pancakes. "I, I have to go, Ino, I, uh, bye." In a state of mild shock that this was really happening, she hung up and got out of the bed, Neji's room, and into the kitchen, where she saw a plate of perfectly crispy bacon lying on a ceramic plate.
A hand automatically reached for it, until Neji's voice interrupted her. "Good Morning." It was indifferent, much different than the voice he used on her yesterday.
She retracted her hand, and turned to the male, who was staring intently at her while flipping a pancake. "Morning," she paused, looking at the pan, "Those are perfect pancakes. How'd you do that? I never know when to flip them on time, they always get burnt on one side."
Neji shrugged, then realise her returning glance to the plate of bacon. "You can have some of you want."
"Ah, well," she blushed, "no thank you. You cooked it, you should have the first piece."
He raised a brow, then picked up a piece of the meat. He nibbled it, then made a face, and handed it to her. "I never like eating bacon unless there's ketchup on it. It's too salty."
She bit into the crunchy breakfast food. "Huh. At least I know something about my husband."
He scowled at her, before sniffing the air. "Is something... Burning?"
She pointed casually to the pan.
"Shoot!"
...
"Tenten?" Neji called out. After breakfast, he'd hit the shower. After all, the best place to think is the misty washroom. "Tenten?" he called out.
She opened the door, and he jumped, turning around so she didn't see his privates, even through the shower curtain. "You called?" she answered from the door.
"Did you shower, because the conditioner is out."
She tapped her chin. "Last night? Yeah. I forgot to tell you." Her lips curled into a smile. "You use conditioner?"
...
"Neji, I don't know about you, but I think that you need more colour around here."
He stopped. Turning around, clad in only grey sweatpants, he asked, quite perplexed, "what?"
She only nodded. "Yep. And maybe new curtains..."
"I thought you studied architecture."
She nodded. "I do. It's just that," she blushed, "in high school, I took a Home Decor class by mistake, instead of Home Economics, so I could cook and stuff. The code was HMD101, and Home Ec was HMC101. I got a little..."
"Confused? As did I. I accidentally took... Cosmetology, when I wanted to take Chemistry in my third year."
She giggled, "no wonder your hair is so glossy."
He smirked. "Jealous?"
She pouted. "Of course not. My hair is just fine."
He walked away from her, shaking his head. Peeved, she stared at the back of his head, and how his hair swayed gently. "It's so perfect!" she squealed when he closed the door of his room.
...
"So Neji," she said, lounging around his much larger apartment. "What's your plan for getting us out of this mess?"
He looked up from his laptop to see his 'wife' on his bed, clad in a black tank top and red jeans, fresh out of the shower. "Well," he waved her over, pointing to the screen, "I'm looking for a good lawyer to get us legally separated, since we are legally together. I've already looked for the Egyptian show, but it's as if it left the face of the planet."
Tenten hmm-ed. Looking the man up and down, she saw how his hair was always perfectly in place; either in a high ponytail or in a very low one. At the moment, his hair was tied at the very end. He was clad in a white shirt, and grey sweatpants. She then realised something.
"I don't know anything about you!"
He raised a brow. "You know my name."
"Of course I know your name! I mean, I don't know any trivial things about you, like your favourite colour, or any secrets or something!"
He thought for a moment. "You know that I only eat bacon with ketchup. You know that I use Garnier Shampoo and Conditioner. You know that I took Cosmetology."
She pondered his words. He was right, after all. "I suppose so... But if we're going to be married, then you should know something about me!"
"I know that you snore."
"Do not!" She pouted. "How would you know that anyways?"
He looked at her incredulously. "We share a room. I'm on the futon on the floor, remember? You've got the bed?"
She tapped her chin. "Yeah, well. Whatever. I'm not a snorer."
"Che. Right."
Peeved, she stuck her tongue out. All of a sudden, her phone rang. It was Hinata. Answering it on the fourth ring, she said, "Hey Hina-chan!"
Neji raised an eyebrow at the nickname. Tenten just stuck her tongue out at him while her best friend chatted on the line.
"So Tenten," the bluenette said as she chopped some veggies to make ramen for you-know-who.
"What?" the other girl replied, pouring herself a drink in Neji's kitchen.
"Well, you know how Naruto-kun was acting weird? He proposed to me last night, and I want you to be my maid of honor."
The brunette did a spit take onto the stove. "What? Really? Congratulations Hinata!"
Neji grumbled when he saw what she just did. "You better clean that up," he mouthed to Tenten.
She held up a finger and continued speaking with her friend. "Who's the best man gonna be?"
At the word 'best man' Neji's ears perked up.
"I'm thinking either my cousin or Sasuke. In the end, Naruto should pick, but it'll probably be Sasuke."
"Oh my gosh! I'm so happy for you! Did you tell the rest of the girls yet?"
She said no, then tossed all her veggies into a pot. "You're the first to find out."
Tenten squealed. "I can't believe you're getting MARRIED."
Neji stood from his seat and grabbed the phone away from a rather ecstatic Tenten, and hissed, "WHAT did you just SAY Hinata-sama?"
Hinata squealed, dropping the potato she was just holding. "N-Neji-nii-san?"
"Oi, Neji, gimme my phone!"
"Not now, Tenten. Now what did you say about getting married? Is it that blonde idiot that you've been prancing around with? Hiashi-sama will not be-"
"My father does not have to know yet!"
"I will tell him immediately, and you should double think this, Hinata!"
"Neji-nii-" he hung up after that. He then proceeded to dial the number for his uncle.
"Neji, Neji, my phone! You're gonna break the touchscreen!" Snatching the IPhone out of the grip of her husband, she argued, "why do you care about who she married anyways? It's her life!"
Once she had the device in her hands, she hung up and petted it gently as if it were a baby. "Because," he snarled as she cooed to her cell, "she's the future of Hyuuga Enterprises, and if she doesn't marry Sasuke Uchiha, then Uchiha Corp-"
"Wait wait, you agree to all this arranged marriage crap?" she looked at him incredulously, stuffing the phone into her pocket. "How would you feel if-"
"But if she doesn't do that, then I have no choice but to take over. Hiashi-sama," he paused, voice cracking, "will cut any hopes of dreams I had of actually controlling my fate and my future."
She was silent.
"I-I'll get married off to some woman, probably that Temari of the Sand Incorporated, and never be able to have any freedom whatsoever."
"But, wait, don't you care about Hinata?"
He scoffed, "couldn't care less of her. She may be my cousin, but that's about it."
She frowned, then looked up at him, "she said she'll try to make you best man, if not Uchiha."
"And how does that affect me?"
"She cares and loves you, Neji. Give it a chance."
He sighed. "She may care, but I don't. I won't interfere with the marriage, until it poses a threat to me. Once it does," he looked at her, "I have no choice."
Tenten only nodded. "Understandable."
Neji walked back to the living room to unplug and shutdown his laptop. "I'm going grocery shopping, do you need anything?"
She grinned. "Conditioner."
...
A couple minutes after he left, Tenten lounged around, watching a bit of television. "Hmm..."
She quickly got bored, and decided on roaming his apartment. It wasn't big, but it was larger than hers. It had two bedrooms, but he was using one of them for storage at the moment, so they had to share a room until it was emptied. He only said that it was off limits, nothing more, so now, standing in front of the door, she wondered what was inside.
"Hmm..." Opening the door, she was impacted with the smell of ink, and inside, there were shelves and shelves of books, some new, old, printed, handwritten. There was a desk in the corner, barely fitting, and it had a sheet of paper with small, loopy cursive writing scrawled on it. It was the beginning of a story.
"The crisp autumn air filled his nose as he inhaled the musty scent of dried ink. 'Ah the art museum,' he whispered, 'my favourite place. This seems promising," she said, continuing the passage until she ran out of words to read. Searching the shelves, she finally found the same handwriting on the cover of a pale yellow notebook, the title of the book saying, "Of Heaven."
Reading it, she absorbed the plot with every word written. The boy, Nathan, wondered why he was alone. Parents dead, no friends, he had nobody. Until he met Maria. She was his everything from the day they met in the park at the age of six, and his heaven, until she had to go away. When he was taken in by a family, he was thankful, and when he was enrolled in the same school as Maria, he was overjoyed. But Maria wasn't Maria. She acted... Different. She didn't know him, and it wasn't until he left that as notice him.
The story was about young love in the halls of a private school, and she ate it up. She was already in chapter four when the lock turned. She gasped, and ran out with the book, and stuffed it under her pillow.
"Tenten," Neji said, "I'm back."
"Oh, hey," she said, feigning waking up from a nap.
"Did you sleep?"
"Mhm, better question, did you get my conditioner?"
He smirked, holding up a bottle of Pantene. "I decided to try a new brand."
She giggled. "Money-back guarantee if you don't like it!"
He pulled out some pasta, cheese, and meat, and was about to cook, when Tenten asked, "what's dinner?"
"La-sag-na," he said, enunciating the 'g'.
"Don't you mean lasagna?" Tenten corrected, pulling the box of pasta away from him.
He shook his head. "There is a g."
"It is silent."
"Then that means the g in every word is silent."
"You're so annoying!" she squealed.
"Naturally."
...
Dinner was uneventful.
Right after, they had both tucked in for bed, Tenten on the bed, Neji on the futon.
"Night Neji."
"Hn."
She sat in the darkness, wondering if he was sleeping or not. She felt guilty that she had robbed him of his bed, even if its supposedly temporary.
After a couple moments though, she heard Neji call her name. "Tenten? You awake?"
She mhm-ed, then whispered, "yeah, why?" Crawling to the edge of the bed, she looked down at her husband in the light of the lamp.
He turned to look at her. "For as long as we are going to be married, let's learn one thing or more about each other everyday."
She nodded. "I learned four about you."
"But nothing about you. What's your favourite color?"
"Hmm, I'd say silver. There's just something about it... How about you?"
"Black."
She smiled at him, then yawned. "Well, better be sleeping." Rolling over, Tenten fell back into the pillows. Oh yes, he did smell good.
...
A/N: This time, I shall update whenever I feel like it. And another thing, in thinking of setting up a schedule for this, like once a month or something. I'll felt you know wince I have it done. THXX