(21)

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As if acquiring a solid form, tension stretches between them.

Hinata blinks rapidly, Sasuke swallows thickly, their eyes lock, their hands still at where they are placed from moments before. Something inside them are screaming for a release, but their lips are shut tight and freeze at the momentum.

The tension wall shatters when Sasuke reaches a hand to the door knob. Hinata pushes away the door out of impulse but the captain has thought one step ahead and placed his foot between the narrowing opening.

"No," she whimpers, "stay away. I'll be in—"

"—We still have time," Sasuke urges, knuckles turning white as his fist tightens around the knob. "If you let me in now."

Hinata's gaze, betraying her resolution, drops to look at his booted foot.

He would have waited in silence for her answer to come naturally, he could in a million times. But this time, he doesn't. He chooses not to hold on to the silence. There is nothing more that he wants but her letting him in.

Deactivating his Sharingan, Sasuke brings his lips a mere breath away from her ear. "Hinata…," he pleads, "let me help."

Biting her lower lip and closing her eyes tight, Hinata shudders. Sasuke is inclined to believe that that he is winning.

"Hinata," he tries again, leaning away to look at her on the eyes. "Let me in. You need my help, you know it."

With tears now becoming undone and streaming down her cheeks, her lithe fingers around the knob turning white as Hinata forcefully pushes the door uncaring about the obstruction that is his feet.

At the sight of her tears, all of his senses become numb.

"I know!" she cries out, trembling in every sense of her being, "I know… you don't have to remind me!" She chokes, airway tightening and free air does not enter her lungs as easily. She doesn't want any of this to happen. This helplessness… this looming fear of getting in heat thus needing another help if she were to let him in.

Hinata didn't ask to be born as an Omega.

"I don't want your help…"

She said the last thing so quietly he almost failed to hear it.

Sasuke can't think of anything worthy to be said. In the end, no words escape him. Silence lingers. Then, slowly, he withdraws his foot.

If it surprises her, she doesn't show it. Yet she doesn't slam the door at him either. On the contrary, she looks… calmer—like she can finally hear and try to accept reasons.

Sasuke takes this as a good sign and saves the knowledge for future needs. Two ends of separate understandings just connect inside his brain and looking at the way she carried herself from moments before felt entirely different when compared to what he is seeing right now. It is making so much sense for he somehow can now see the bigger picture. He understands it on a deeper level, even. She is used to limited options, being born as an Omega, so she has to make the most of every chances by being the one to decide. It's her life, it's her choice, not someone else's.

She needs to make the call.

But she also needs to understand. He has to make her understand that he can't leave her alone, not like this. It isn't even about her, isn't only about her; it's about him.

How can he handle leaving her just like that?

"It's late, you haven't rested properly," he tries to reason, searching her eyes with his gaze. "It won't be easy to look for help in the morning in your condition… with your situation." He almost curses himself when Hinata's left eyebrow twitch at the slight emphasize at the end.

He catches the first sniff of the all too familiar enticing scent.

They've wasted too much time.

"Hinata… let me in for now," he presses, he really can't help it. "You'll choose whatever you decide as we go."

Hinata redirects her eyes downwards, considering her options and his offers. In her current condition, her senses are already blunted to begin with. Sasuke realises this and he doesn't know whether it would benefit them in some way or not. There isn't any shift in her expression, so he takes that as a sign she still isn't aware of it. It's a good start, for now.

"You have my word."

Her eyes return to his and for what feels like a moment enough to change their fate, they maintain their gaze at each other. Still in silence, Hinata finally decides to open her door wider. Sasuke waits for a moment before he brings a foot inside, then another. After all of him is inside, Hinata turns her back and treads deeper into the space. With body completely facing her retreating back, Sasuke discards his boots, neatly places them next to an upturned pair of hers, then closes the door behind him with one hand and blue light gleams around said hand as he seals the door.

Her back is to him when she halts near the couch covered in suede.

Sasuke keeps his distance.

"Sit down," he requests gently, reactivating his Sharingan.

She obeys quietly. But, still, her back is to him.

The couch shifts under him when he sits behind her, a hand hovering the small of her back, aligned right at her core, where the center of her blue light dims and pitiful sparks spurt out occasionally trying to escape its invisible confinement to no avail.

"Can I begin?"

Can he begin?

She really doesn't know. She doesn't want his help yet she needs it. With so little to choose in her situation, what other choice does she have? She does need the help and he even comes personally to provide just what she needs.

Shutting her eyes tight and biting her lip, Hinata nods.

Blue chakra begins to gleam around his hand as he tries transferring necessary chakra to flow and spread within her pathway eschewed of the block at her core.

Hinata releases a sigh when their chakra connects. She can perfectly feel his chakra that flows within her vessels, strong, engulfing her as a whole, yet not overbearing to the point that she loses senses of her own. It has its own current, unit, and mind of its own within her. This isn't the first time someone giving their chakra to her, but all of them doesn't hold a candle to this experience at all. All of them has felt like a dry, fleeting systematically executed procedure, none has introduced her to this sensation in the slightest, the sensation where she feel like she can interact with someone's chakra on a deeper level.

As Sasuke transmits chakra needed to replenish her basal need, his eyes studies the annular foreign force, searching for any defect, and so little and tricky to solve does he find it. If he wasn't careful, he could be feeding the block not her with his chakra.

This rogue is no ordinary man, they both know it in their bones.

There is an unstable deformity at the lateral border that only widens for half to one second in a sporadic fashion. So far, approximately in the last six minutes he is tending her pathway, he has counted three episodes of dysregulation. In the next six minutes, he will have three chances to sever the block. Three chances that he can't afford to lose because in the second six minutes, Hinata would no longer be the only one with a drained chakra reserve. He has always known his weakness has always been low chakra reserve and activating Sharingan and transferring his chakra to her are both exerting and draining his reserve that is low to begin with quickly. It doesn't help that her scent is becoming overwhelming by each seconds.

Sasuke misses his first chance when Hinata suddenly shifts.

"Uchiha-taichou…," she murmurs tightly, sweat bead drips to Sasuke's thigh when she half-turns her head towards him. "I…I'm starting to feel it."

Hinata feels an intense sense of inclination that receiving Sasuke's chakra speeds up the reaction towards his presence. Not only does it accelerate the process, it further intensifies the symptoms. Her weak resentment towards him and his certain ways as response to their predicament before appearing right at her door is overcome by her desire to have him, just like a basal need. She knows what she really wants to pursue in this moment and she prays to Gods she still has what it takes to put a stop to whatever this is.

While both his hands are on the work, Sasuke is completely silent.

She waits further but he remains wordless. So she shifts, trying to look over her shoulder to fish a reaction out of him.

Sasuke loses his second chance.

"Stay still, I'm getting there," he says, voice tight, because it's also starting to affect him and after this last chance they wouldn't be able to have another.

Sensing the weight of their situation from his answer, Hinata stiffens. Although he didn't word it in a way to put the blame on her, she knows that she has done something wrong. So she stays still, and staying still has never been this hard to bear. Once her whole being focuses to only keeping her body still, the sensation of getting in heat is shoved to the peripherals only for so long, it steadily crawls to the center, encompassing her resolve into its clutch.

She has no control over it when it's only getting harder and even harder to breathe.

Known only to Sasuke due to his activated Sharingan, the tiny defect on the annular block narrows further when she stiffens. Sasuke sighs and the glow around his hand dims as he kisses her on the shoulder.

Over the robe she is wearing, he murmurs, "Relax."

Hinata tries and even though so little does she succeed, his tiny encouragement did help.

When Sasuke takes notice of the weakly yet steadily growing rift, his hand begins to glow again.

He succeeds on the third try.

He is certain because he can feel it. He can't quite explain it clearly… just that it feels like a part of his body that has its own connection to his brain.

Still transferring chakra to her, now significantly easier without the risk of feeding the block, Sasuke shifts to her side to get a vision of her temple.

"Try activating your Byakugan," he encourages.

Biting her lip, she nods, and veins like twigs appears on her temples as she activates her eye prowess.

She activates it like how she always did from the very first time she activated it, like everything has been rectified to the point of being reborn.

"How is it?"

With her Byakugan, Hinata looks right through his Sharingan.

They've stared at each other on the eyes multiple times before, but it's the first time with both their kekkei genkai activated. It's quite the experience, like looking through a slice of ruby and an intricate system of ocular pathways is behind it.

She can see everything, even the tiniest threads and the faintest flows of chakra around and to his eyes.

A mesmerizing sight.

"I can see fine," Hinata reveals, eyes sweeping over every little attribute and learning where it comes and where it flows, "you've done … you've done wonders."

While Hinata is admiring the sight of his eyes and the framework behind it, he can only look so much with his Sharingan.

"How about your chakra reserve, can you have complete control?"

Hinata blinks slowly before she has to divert her eyes from his as she tries conjuring a lion on one hand. It doesn't come as easily as usual since she has another pressing matter at hand that drains most of her attention; being in heat. Still, with the help of the Byakugan, she can follow the flow of her chakra originating from her core and manages to prevent herself from pulling Sasuke's chakra in.

Sasuke watches the lion stare back at him in silence.

Deactivating her Byakugan, Hinata's eyes return to Sasuke's, nodding her affirmation as her blue lion morphes to irregular glow then dims accordingly.

Sasuke merely nods, his own eyes return to their original dark colour. Then, without warning, he picks her up.

Knowing exactly where this is going, eyes downcast and cheeks scarlet from mortification and another emotion she refuses to admit, Hinata can't help saying, "I'm filthy…"

She also silently hopes it's enough reason for him to just leave her be.

There isn't a single twitch coming from the captain. It doesn't affect him in anyway simply because he doesn't care.

But he cares that she cares.

"Where is your bathroom?"

Author's Note :

A present for Christmas, Hinata's birthday, and New Year. It's close to someone's birthday as well... but since I know they haven't reached this part of Fated Pair yet, I can't have this chapter as a birthday gift for them as well lol.

This isn't how it works, I know, but cut me some slack, eh? xD

I'll be very busy at the start of 2023, I'm having a headache just thinking about it. But I can assure you chapter 22 will make appearance next month, I'm done with it 75%, and boy it is intense. As for the rest of the chapters...you'll have to be patient. I know you all have been very patient with this story, so I'm asking you for more :(

Happy Christmas and Merry New Year!

- Crowds