Archive of Our Own ^beta

Panic still pulsed in Neji Hyuga’s veins when Might Gai faced him with arms crossed, his features set like stone. Standing across the forested clearing, Neji held his white eyes steady so his face betrayed none of his anxiety.

“Neji,” Gai began, stern but still warm. “You don’t need me to explain your mistake to you, I’m sure.”

Neji squeezed his eyes shut. He pictured the moment that threw all his reason aside. A missing-nin had Ten-ten pinned against a tree with his rusty switchblade to her throat, his hand around her upper thigh. She’s a pretty little thing, the man sneered. Most kunoichi aren’t so soft and nice looking. Hey, she’s not a bad prize. Thick fingers reached for Ten-ten’s cheek, caressing the side of her face while she lolled her head back to escape their touch. She twisted her shoulders before the blade grazed the pale skin of her neck, drawing a fine line of blood. The two men guarding either side of the tree prevented her from fighting her way free.

“I do not need you to explain, Gai-sensei.”

An involuntary scowl curled Neji’s upper lip as he spoke.

Do your thing, Kaito, but she’s too dangerous to keep around. The girl won’t be so pretty once we spill her guts.

That careless declaration – and the men’s hacking laughter – flooded Neji with outrage. Hidden among the trees by his side, Lee and Gai watched with impassive faces. Do something, Neji hissed at them, only for Gai to shush him. Replaying those terrible minutes, Neji now saw that Ten-ten was their pawn. By triggering a reckless response from her teammates, the missing-nin hoped to neutralize the leaf shinobi’s advantage in power and skill. Without rallying with his teacher or teammate, Neji charged in blind panic, activating his Byakugan as he leapt from above.

A rough strip of fabric tied beneath her tongue, Ten-ten watched, helpless, as more missing-nin descended from the trees in every direction.

“I don’t mean to insult your intelligence here. Nor do I mean to intrude on your personal affairs, but understand that shinobi need to set our attachments aside.”

Neji nodded. If the enemy took a hostage other than Ten-ten, he could have seen the situation clearly. Once again, the voice of hindsight screamed at Neji to be better. Neji now recalled the rustle in the trees around them – obvious signs of co-conspirators waiting to attack. Before the ambush, the missing-nin had glanced sidelong every so often as if searching for signals from comrades out of sight.

Neji’s impulsiveness forced Gai and Lee to blow their covers and lend him their aid. Together, they fended off the missing-nin and rescued Ten-ten, but at unnecessary danger to her and themselves. Ten-ten stumbled straight to Neji with fear dancing in the shadows of her eyes. In the moments after, he clutched Ten-ten’s quivering form to his chest. His hardened white eyes challenged Lee and Gai to object while he pressed his lips to her forehead.

“I-I do not know what you mean,” Neji stammered, adrenaline quickening his breath. “I was acting rashly, yes – out of loyalty for this team.”

Gai huffed and set a meaty hand on Neji’s upper arm, his lips in a thin line. Gai declined to call Neji’s lie, but he obviously grew weary of his equivocations.

Neji’s sheer relief at seeing Ten-ten unharmed made him forget the importance of discretion. Before that day, the lovers addressed one another as colleagues and friends in public. Their relationship remained a strictly private affair. Gai had offered the lovers a few seconds before his uncompromising hands pried Ten-ten away. Their teacher reminded them – rightfully – that they still weren’t fully safe.

“I suppose something like this is an inevitability with teams of both young men and women,” Gai continued. “Regardless, I believe you can look to the interests of your team and the village.”

To those without his team’s familiarity with their teacher, Gai seemed too blunt for such delicate conversations. But Neji understood Gai’s unspoken point – abandon your love for Ten-ten. You’re teammates and shinobi – falling in love isn’t supposed to happen. The suggestion brought heat to Neji’s face and neck. He resisted the urge to tell Gai exactly how he felt about it.

“I am a loyal leaf-nin looking for this team’s interests.”

That was the truth, even if Neji’s actions had endangered Team Gai’s lives. Lee now nursed a cut to his leg. Just beyond the clearing where Neji stood, Ten-ten cleaned Lee’s wound while they hoped it wasn’t poisoned. Gai gave Neji’s arm a firm squeeze. His black eyes seized Neji’s, a low growl rising from the base of his throat.

“Ten-ten does not – should not – come before the rest of the team, or our mission. You clearly lack the capacity –”

“Ten-ten...is just as important to me as you or Lee,” Neji breathed out. His vision blurred, panic driving his continued lies.

The more Gai demeaned him as immature or discounted his love, the more Neji doubled down on the indefensible.

“You need to be honest with yourself. At your age, your sense of restraint is not fully developed. I may have to –”

“You’re telling me there will be consequences if I don’t do as you wish?”

The shinobi code of conduct said nothing about romantic entanglements within teams. However, Gai could request penalties if Neji and Ten-ten’s relationship interfered with their duties. Those penalties included re-assignment to new teams and new schedules to minimize the lovers’ interactions.

Gai cleared his throat and mouthed the word sorry, which Neji rejected with a shake of his head.

“That’s correct. I am not doing this because I consider your happiness unimportant. We all must make sacrifices of our own happiness in this line of work.”

Damn it. Neji cursed Gai for saying what he thus far danced around. Spikes drove into Neji’s heart. Faced with Gai’s ultimatum, Neji realized just how inextricable the lovers had become. He craved the warmth and softness of her early morning kisses before they pulled camp, her little smiles, the squeeze of her hand in his. His tender heart tempted him to beg and negotiate with Gai to keep them together, while his pride held fast.

“You lack faith in me, despite recommending me for promotion to jounin just a year earlier.”

Gai gave his enthusiastic recommendation before Neji and Ten-ten’s bond escalated. No doubt he never anticipated these kinds of occupational hazards threatening his team’s unity. An enthusiastic newly minted jounin taking his first genin team couldn’t be faulted for his ignorance. Gai tilted his chin down to cast long shadows across his face, brows knitting over narrowed eyes.

“Neji, if you refuse to fix your weakness, perhaps my faith was misplaced.”

Though he expected Gai’s latest rebuke, a twinge of pain twisted Neji’s chest. Even if his teacher’s silly antics and chipper demeanor grated on him, Neji respected Gai and craved his approval. He stiffened with pride whenever his teacher praised him or offered him additional training because he believed Neji “could take it.”

“Hm. I have no weakness to fix.”

“Enough of this,” Gai huffed, arms crossed over his shinobi vest. “I’m wasting my time with you, when I should see that Lee’s okay.”

“Very well.”

Gai turned his back without another word. The silence between Neji and his teacher hung heavy.

“One more thing. For his sake and yours, I pray that Lee isn’t too badly harmed. You’d better start praying, too.”

Was that a threat? Neji wondered. A threat to one of the hidden leaf’s most promising young jounin for allowing – no, causing – harm to Gai’s favorite student and surrogate son? His teacher was a hypocrite, that was certain. An unwelcome thought came to Neji. Between rescuing Lee and risking Neji or Ten-ten, Gai would choose Lee every time. The realization seeped and settled beneath his skin.

Already born to shield the main clan, Neji admitted he didn’t like being his teacher’s disposable student. Now by simple matter of favoritism, he was Lee’s unwilling shield, too. So who was Gai – or anyone else – to judge him for playing favorites?

Neji hoped for relief in a scalding shower followed by a splash of cold water to his face. Finding none, he slipped beneath the sheets on his hotel bed and chased sleep. After untold hours of frustration, he settled for lulling himself into a daze before the television. The voices on the television set eventually turned to an indistinct buzz in Neji’s ears.

“Neji? You in there?”

He sensed Ten-ten immediately from the soft rap of her knuckles on his door. Both Gai and Lee would have pounded the door until its vibrations reverberated throughout the room. Neji’s heart accelerated in anticipation – he’d burned to see her alone since the moment Gai separated them.

“Come in. The door is unlocked.”

Curling her shoulders and venturing a small wave, Ten-ten slipped through a crack in the door before immediately closing it behind her. Neji rushed to his lover, quivering hands flying to embrace her. Folded in his arms, she kept her eyes on their bare feet. Ten-ten’s breaths quickened alongside Neji’s thrumming pulse. She refused to back away, but wouldn’t relax into Neji’s arms or say why she came to him so late at night. They maintained their odd equilibrium until painful curiosity drove Neji to speak.

“Ten-ten, why did you come? Are you alright?”

Neji grasped his lover’s chin between two fingers and attempted to lift her face. She closed her eyes once he brought her to eye level. The rejection stung far worse than Gai’s statement that Neji didn’t deserve his promotion. The lovers had told each other so many times that their bond could endure any trials. Perhaps a serious test of those words exposed Ten-ten as a liar.

“To talk,” she whispered, the rasp in her voice pricking Neji’s ears.

“About what?”

Ten-ten tensed her shoulders at the hard edge in Neji’s question and twisted to escape him. She sat in the room’s only hardback chair with hands folded in her lap. She avoided the bed, like she wanted to cast distance between them. Perched on the bed, Neji clicked off the television. Once the rush of sounds and lights stopped, he wished for their return – silence was so much harder to bear.

“Neji, please. I know we’ve been through a lot today...and I know you were looking out for me,” she began.

“I am aware. Gai-sensei already delivered quite the lecture earlier. He believes we should no longer see each other as any more than teammates, and called my promotion to jounin into question.”

Ten-ten’s eyes drifted up to the ceiling. Her lips curved into a frown that pleaded for escape from the room, from his presence. From her timid tone and wandering eyes, Neji inferred that she came to deliver an uncomfortable confession – to end things. The prospect of losing her brought hot tears to his eyes. Neji wanted to ask whether she still loved him. Then fear swelled his throat and paralyzed his tongue.

“Hey, I’m sorry to hear that. I guess he already chewed you out. I’m not here to do that, though.”

“You could have fooled me.”

Neji raised a fine brow, crossing his arms. Beneath the glare of his white eyes, she pressed a fist to her lips.

“I’m just telling you...in the future, if it’s between me or the team –”

“Shut up, now,” Neji snapped. His hands grasped the bedsheets, tearing them free from their tucked corners.

The image of the rusty blade to Ten-ten’s throat flashed before him. If Neji hesitated even a minute longer, he imagined the missing-nin reaching his hand up her thigh and down her pants. The man appeared poised to violate her, then spill her blood into the leaf litter below. He shuddered at the thought.

“I’m saying don’t put them in danger, don’t put yourself in danger for me.”

“All of us are capable, Ten-ten. We survived.”

“I mean, true. But maybe that won’t happen next time.”

Neji waved a hand to dismiss her concerns. His other hand gripped his stomach to stem his nausea. Both teammates knew luck often mattered more for survival than skill, and it was fortunate that Lee’s cut contained no poison. Yet Neji preferred to attribute their fates to something other than the universe’s whims. He held Ten-ten ever tighter in his mind, refusing to believe or allow that fate could take her from him.

“You’re happy to be alive, aren’t you?”

Neji stood from the bed and paced the room, anything to vent his formless agitation. Ten-ten pulled her knees to her chest and perched the heels of her feet on the edge of the chair.

“Of course I am,” she confessed. “I...feel bad about it, but I’m so relieved you came in. It was wrong, though.”

“Then there’s nothing more to say about it.”

Neji made a slicing motion with his right hand, almost slamming the tips of his fingers into the wall. As Ten-ten watched with wide eyes, he ground his teeth and shook his head.

“You remember what they taught us in class, right? About the mission coming first. Your team –”

“Yes. Fuck all of that.”

The rare outburst of profanity elicited a fearful whimper from Ten-ten, who shrank back against her chair.

“Oh –”

“I meant what I said,” Neji insisted. “I can handle whatever punishment Gai-sensei or the hokage see fit to give me.”

“You aren’t forgetting Lee, right? I-I would know. It could have been so much worse for him. Out there, a cut could be a death sentence –”

Ten-ten ended her sentence when Neji crossed the room to stand before her.

“What? Why are you watching me like that?”

Neji saw Lee’s grinning face, his teammate’s signature smile complemented by a thumbs-up. Guilt lurched his stomach. But casting his eyes on Ten-ten reminded him of who really was worth saving. Just as Gai would allow him to die a thousand times before Lee, Neji would do the same to either of them. He wouldn’t relish the necessary sacrifice, nor would Gai risk his other students lightly.

“You’re...scaring me a little.”

“I’ll have you know that Gai-sensei threatened me should Lee not make it, Ten-ten. He told me to start praying for my own sake,” Neji said, his voice low and heavy.

Repeating his teacher’s words brought bitter catharsis. He would vindicate himself to Ten-ten, and expose the lie in the village’s shinobi doctrine. No person could possibly hold themselves to such unrealistic standards of detachment.

“No, no he wouldn’t!”

“He did. Are you calling me a liar?”

Burying her face in her hands, Ten-ten shook her head. No, she muttered. No, I believe you.

“Still...Neji, you care about Lee, don’t you?”

Now she tried to ensnare him. Neji had to admit that Lee’s serious injury or death would have tempered his relief at seeing Ten-ten unharmed. If it comes down to it, fuck everyone who’s not us, he told himself, finally owning the terrible thought. As he strung the words in his mind, Neji released the thought from the corner where it resided for so long. Telling the truth freed him, cutting away tendrils of doubt and guilt.

“Lee is a good friend. I’ve grown to appreciate him as a teammate over the years.”

Neji selected each word carefully.

“Then you know there’s more than just me to consider. In the future, if this ever happens again.”

Neji didn’t need to say no, that’s not an option and you know it. The twitch in his lip communicated the message in terms Ten-ten could understand.

He knelt beside her, knees digging into cold hardwood planks. Ten-ten set her feet on the floor, opening her lap for Neji to lay his head down. His pride kept him from saying he needed to feel her touch, to release every worry into her waiting lap. But they had a wordless system so he could ask for her, and she could offer herself. Ten-ten ran her hands through his still-damp hair and hummed a few loose notes.

“Neji,” she breathed out. “Oh, I hate to say it, but if it were between you and Lee, I think I’d choose you.”

“So you do understand.”

“I-I know, I’m a horrible person.”

By extension, she labeled him a horrible person as well – but he didn’t care. Neji reached for her hand and kissed each knuckle. The fine bones of her fingers were fragile in his hands, and touching her so intimately swelled his heart. He considered their current position even more intimate than making love.

Shinobi made such terrible choices on a daily basis, Neji reminded himself. He envied civilians who could entertain them only in idle conversation or moments of sentimentality. They could say I would die for you or I would go to the ends of the earth to protect you without ever needing to take their lofty vows beyond words.

Neji’s lips split into a sloppy smile as he leaned into the slender hand stroking his cheek. Indulging in Ten-ten’s caresses and the echoes of her confession, euphoria lightened his mind. Eventually, Ten-ten commented something about her foot falling numb from sitting so long, and they found their way onto the bed.

Ten-ten laid propped up on three pillows flattened by age and drained of most of their stuffing. His head found its familiar place on her upper chest, his hand reaching under her shirt. She sighed when his fingers wound around the outer curve of her breast. The smell of soap mingled with a sweet scent that was all hers, so faint Neji could only smell it when pressed against her body.

“There you go,” Ten-ten muttered.

Ten-ten’s lips tickled the top of Neji’s head, as did her breathy laughter. Another time, she said she could hardly believe he – of all people – could lie with her like he did now. I thought all of you guys were just after that one thing, she’d quipped, her hum punctuated by little giggles. I’m not opposed to some cuddles, though. After Neji’s ears burned bright red from her teasing, Ten-ten never raised the observation again. Yet she was probably thinking it in that moment.

Still reeling from the day, any self-consciousness fell away from Neji like leaves from a tree in the change of seasons. He craved Ten-ten’s presence – and she needed him in the same way. That was enough for him to burrow deeper and press a kiss to the hard ridge of her collarbone.

“I love you,” he whispered, the sound muffled by her warm body. “I never want this to end.”

Reminded of their near loss, Ten-ten wrapped her arm around his shoulders and squeezed. The blissful, warm haze left him numbed.

“We have today. That’s...more than enough for me right now. Let’s not worry about tomorrow, okay?”

Neji nodded. The reminder of an uncertain and scary future made Neji cling to his lover. He lifted his head to capture her lips in a kiss that sucked away her breath, same as it left him gasping. The heat, wetness and raw desire in their kiss roused a familiar fire in Neji’s core, made all the more intense by desperation.

We have today, he reminded himself. Tomorrow, they could find their time together cut short by the slice of a rusty switchblade or a rain of shuriken. Neji’s hand clamped down on her tender breast, his thumb toying with her stiffened nipple. A thread of spit connected their swollen lips once he withdrew for air.

“I want you, now.”

“Mmh. You’re eager, aren’t you?”

Her teasing sing-song normally galvanized Neji into seizing her and taking what he wanted. But her voice raised a flare of irritation instead.

“You would be, too, in my place.”

Ten-ten gave his shoulder a light shove to cast him on his back, reaching her fingers for the clasp on his shirt.

“Eh, fair enough,” she snickered. “You’d better fuck me good so I can die happy if I go tomorrow.”

Neji drew a sharp breath and knit his brows at her morbid joke. Swallowing the thick bile on his tongue, he set a hand over his chest to stall Ten-ten.

Her good humored approach to death wasn’t out of place among shinobi. If they didn’t laugh at the danger they faced, they would surely fold beneath overwhelming dread. Still, Neji hated when his colleagues joked about the many ways they could die, and might die soon. His own confrontations with death – first, the death of his father, then his mother – made him reluctant to join them. Faced with her lover’s paralysis, Ten-ten undid the line of buttons running across her chest before pulling her shirt over her head.

Ten-ten set one leg on either side of Neji’s hips and brushed his cheek. Her fingertips spoke to him in soft whispers. They told of her love and promise to remain forever by his side. That if the world forced their hands, it would be them against the rest of the world.

“I’m here,” Ten-ten hummed. “You’re okay, and so am I. I’ll stay here for the entire night if you need me.”

Neji caught her hand and ran his thumb across the backs of her fingers.

“Thank you.”

The lovers intertwined in a nest of limbs and tangled hair. As their hands and lips drank each other in, layers of fabric scattered atop the blankets and across the floor. The press of their exposed skin, the tangle of their bare limbs flooded him with liquid heat. Neji’s greedy hands ran from Ten-ten’s shoulders to her thighs. Her back arched, yielding to him the way she always did. He relished her quivering and heaving as he touched between her legs. His mind tried to capture every sensation and movement of their time together, mapping her body.

Once Neji entered her, his mind swam with bliss. The tiny whimpers and sighs emanating from the base of his lover’s throat drove him to move faster, harder. While they came together and apart, Ten-ten’s feet curled over the small of his back. Her shrill cries of pleasure elicited his climax minutes later. Soon after, Neji lapsed into deep sleep with Ten-ten’s lips on his forehead. With her by his side, the dark unknown of tomorrow didn’t scare him so much.