“There are other ways.”
“Not as easy as this one.”
His white eyes stole a glance of her hunched figure, rummaging through her bag at their campsite, her face and its expression out of sight. The distant lights from the village cast moving shadows on her back.
Lee stretched nearby, preparing for the mission to come, an indication that his attention would be elsewhere for the time being.
Neji spoke in a hushed voice, anyway. “Since when do you prefer easy?”
Tenten sighed and straightened, turned to look at Neji at last. A pair of dangly red earrings caught the faint light. “Do we have to go through this every time one of these missions comes up? I told you, it’s quick and easy.” She retrieved what appeared to be a dress, reddish brown, with slits that were visible even to Neji’s inexperienced eye. “And it’s fun.”
Even with her lips turned away, he could hear the smile in her voice. A sensation tickled his guts, and annoyance mingled with his dread, turning his lips’ edges downward.
She unzipped her pants and his eyes were off of her before they hit the ground. His ears heated. Not even years of changing in her teammates’ presence had softened the shock of seeing her don her clothes. She would often tease him about it, mentioning things like if only everyone had your morals and still a puss*, huh?
When he was sure she was dressed, he stole another glance. He first noted her hair, undone from its braids and hanging around her shoulders. It covered only half of her back, revealed by the dress. The dress itself was long, bearing a slit along her right leg up to its mid-thigh. A dress he would never catch in the hallways of the Hyuuga mansion. The thought filled him with something close to excitement.
Safe to say, the dress— the way it colored her cheeks, the way it hugged her figure— would distract men and women alike from her calloused knuckles, her sharp eyes, the scars her shoulders held. It would distract anyone from the fact that she was in truth an elite jounin, not a drunk flirt in a backless dress looking for fun.
“Break their naïve, youthful hearts, Tenten!” Lee patted her back with enough force to rattle her bones, teeth on display and blinding.
“Will do.”
She cast Neji an easy smile, and departed to the bar in which her targets awaited. Neji gulped as he watched his teammate sink deeper into femininity the further she walked away, the fabric stretching at her hips with every step.
Tenten sighed, excited. There wasn't a soul she would admit this to, but she almost looked forward to missions of this kind. Pretend you’re drunk, flirt your way to information, leave with top secrets and a perfect amount of adrenaline in your veins.
Something about the reminder that her femininity, even bare of the weapons she so dearly adored, being deadly by and of itself sent giddy waves through her body.
They were a hundred times more fun when Neji was assigned on her team. She could admit to herself, though guiltily, that she often tried to extract meaning from the micro differences in his demeanor when Tenten flirted with random men— pigs and gentlemen alike. She had matured. She no longer awaited his glances and craved his skin’s contact like she used to during childhood. But there was no harm in teasing an attractive guy that’s so easily tease-able, was there?
As she made her way through the dark, she cleared her throat and gave the device she wore a testing try. “Hear me alright?”
“Yes,” breathed Neji in her ear. She could picture him perched in a nearby tree, Byakuugan activated and out of sight. He would interfere if commotion arose, along with Lee. “The easiest target seems to be the guy in blue. He looks drunk enough.”
“You sound tense.”
“I’m not tense. I’m cautious.”
“Right,” she rolled her eyes. After a moment’s silence, “You know, Neji, one day you should try missions like this out. Flirt your heart out. A lot of guys would kill to have a night with you, you know.”
He scoffed, irritated. “I’d do a better job, anyway.” She smirked.
“You’d look better, too. Silky black hair and cute eyes. They’d pay good f*cking money.”
Neji sighed, clearly flattered at her half-comments but repulsed by the thought of strangers wanting to touch him. “I don’t think I’d look better,” he said innocently.
She chuckled. “How do I look?”
“You’ll do fine.”
“That’s not what I asked.” She walked backward for a moment, and sent a wink to the dark sky he was hidden somewhere in.
She heard his breath hitch, satisfied by her warm-up. Although Neji was painfully easy to fluster, hearing his gulp in her earpiece filled her with the confidence she needed to start the night.
What she didn’t expect, and the thing that caused the slightest waver in her step as she pushed the bar’s door open, was his muttered response. “You look beautiful.”
The wind blew at that moment, tickling her back with cold fingers and ruffling her hair. Despite the tens of feet between them, it felt as if Neji had whispered the words in her ear himself, with a cold hand on her body and his breath on her neck.
He heard Tenten laugh. Usually, it’s fine, really. They’ve been on several missions like this one. She makes it out safe, with valuable information, and looking like she had fun. He’d ignore the painful twist of his heart when she touches a chest or whisperes in an ear. The pigs she’d flirt with would be blacked out by the time she left, with no recollection in the morning of her or the things they’d spilled.
And it would be the same this time, he would suck it up and watch, if he wasn’t sure the man she was currently all over was unmistakably her type.
She laughed in his headpiece, his super-vision catching her head roll back and her neck stretch. “I wouldn’t say so.”
“Then I’d disagree.” The stranger brought his glass to his lips. Neji fumed, remembering how the initial target— the man in blue— had passed out before she got the chance to take a seat next to him. The only other option, since the bar was barely busy and most were not drinking, had been the man she was currently conversing with. Middle-aged and annoyingly witty, he had a soft smile and a stare that seemed to penetrate Tenten in a way Neji loathed.
The plan, she had figured, was to flirt through the night, drinking the hours and the glasses away until he was ripe enough for the plucking. Unfortunately, Neji thought, this meant that Tenten would have to drink, too.
“Such a flirt.” She took a sip of her wine. “Tell me, don’t you have a wife to go home to?” She smoothened her voice, turned down its pitch, a technique Neji noticed she had picked up with practice.
“If I did, would you be jealous?”
Tenten hummed, a smirk playing at her lips. Neji had the sense it was sincere. “Is she as pretty as I am?”
“I haven’t met a single woman who is half that.”
Tenten’s chakra faltered, and Neji subconsciously cleared his throat. Her body gave the slightest jerk, barely enough to register, and Neji grit his teeth at the implication that she had forgotten he was watching.
“Then I’m not jealous at all,” she shrugged.
The man chuckled, a soft voice, almost affectionate. “Either way, I don’t.” He noticed Tenten’s empty glass and ordered her another. “Ninja life is most fruitful when it’s lonely.”
“You’re ninja?” Tenten gasped. Neji rolled his eyes, getting the urge to announce that he’s ninja, too.
The man hummed, gulped down his whiskey.
Tenten rested her chin on a hand. “Must be nice.” She’s such a good actress, thought Neji, almost uneasily.
“Sure is, if it weren’t for my empty bed at night.”
“Oh, I’m sure we can fix that.”
“I’m sure we can,” he smirked, then ordered another glass for himself. He glanced at Tenten’s, and as if broken out of a trance, she picked it up and sipped on it.
Neji was getting worried. This man was on his fourth glass of whiskey, and still, he wouldn’t slip up or show any sign of getting sloppy. Tenten was known for many things, but holding her liquor was not one of them.
“And you? I hardly think you don’t have men lined at your feet. Why brings you alone to an empty bar on a dead Tuesday?”
Neji suspected a glance from Tenten in his general direction. She paused, stirring the red liquid in her glass. “A broken heart.”
Neji felt his breath thin. It was driving him crazy, the way she seemed to lie with so much ease. So much so that he doubted they were lies at all. A wave of an unwelcome emotion at this ‘heartbreaker’ washed along his nerves’ shore, rocking all common sense unstable.
“I know the best remedy.”
“And what would that be?” breathed Tenten.
The man leaned in. Whispered something in her ear. Neji squirmed his hearing intently to no avail. The man’s mouth mumbled over the ear that held with no device, so smoothly and quietly that it could only pick on the faintest of indiscernible sounds.
With a jolt, Neji realized he was leaning so much forward that he almost fell off the branch. His Byakuugan registered heat in her face, and he willed his breathing to slow down. What disgusting things did this stranger whisper in her ear? What remedy did he speak of? Why would she let him lean in so close?
“Tenten,” he called, and saw her squeeze her eyes in annoyance at his voice, as the man lingered below her ear, on the edge of her neck. “He’s too close.”
The man’s hand was on her thigh now, and the picture of it broken, bones poking out, flashed behind Neji’s eyes. Tenten hummed softly; the sound of her quick breaths as the stranger’s whispers caressed her neck made Neji jump to his feet.
“Tenten,” he called again, almost panicked.
Tenten reached a hand up, hidden from the man’s sight, and to Neji’s horror—
“Tenten,” he yelled, but she had already removed the earpiece, dropping it on the floor in one swift motion.
Damn it. What was she thinking?
Neji stood there, panicked, rage and worry and the sudden silence overcoming his senses. He stained his eyes harder, as if it would help him hear their conversation.
He could see his lips moving, saw Tenten twitch under his touch, and a moment later, his lips were on hers.
Neji flew toward them. He didn’t care who saw. He didn’t care if the village’s ninja detected a foreign ninja in their territory. Neji only saw the man’s lips on her neck and a second later the man’s own neck was in Neji’s hands.
I’m also ninja, he wanted to tell him, as the man fought to breathe in Neji’s grasp. And a goddamn stronger one.
The man’s eyes were turning red, and satisfaction, oh, sweet satisfaction was upon Neji when a punch to his face threw him off and he dropped the choking body.
Tenten’s hands held Neji by his collar. “Are you f*cking stupid?” she shrieked, then pushed him away. She seemed torn for a minute, then seemed to decide to play it off and knelt next to the man, now sprawled on the floor amidst fallen chairs. “Are you okay?” Her voice returned smooth, feminine.
She tried to help him up but a second later a kunai was on her throat. “Oldest trick in the f*cking book, and I fell for it.”
Before Neji could blink, Tenten had twisted her body out of the man’s grasp. “Sorry,” she spat, kunai pointed at his crotch.
They stood still for a moment, his kunai pointing to her throat, hers to his groin. Neji panted angrily, watching his every move, eyes throbbing but still activated.
“Shame,” the man sneered. “I liked you.”
Neji saw a shuriken appear in Tenten’s other hand, out of thin air. She thrust it at his shoulder just as she leaped backward, and his kunai missed her throat by merely an inch. Before her shuriken grazed his shoulder he had disappeared and materialized behind her. Tenten’s dress was too tight but Neji’s eyes were fast enough.
He grabbed the man’s arm, reaching for Tenten, and twisted it, just as Tenten’s kunai whipped past Neji’s ear and sunk into his other shoulder. Neji watched the man crumble to the ground, indulging in the satisfaction of hearing him scream in pain.
“We should kill him,” she said, scowling in rage and not meeting Neji’s eyes.
“It wouldn’t do any good,” he said, looking around the now completely empty bar and registering the approaching ninja in the distance. “We’re already caught. Let’s get out of here.”
Her figure disappeared without an answer. Neji followed.
The way back to Konoha was fast and tense. Even though Neji was certain they had thrown the enemies off, Tenten would not slow down, and as soon as the silence had stretched on for over fifteen minutes, Neji gulped. He was in trouble.
“Tenten,” he called. Her pace did not slow. “Tenten.”
He was not used to this. She was impatient. She did not give silent treatments. Usually when she was mad, she’d have exploded in his face by now, and they’d be halfway through an argument.
“Tenten?” Still no reaction.
He sped forward and touched her shoulder. She rounded on him. Tenten stared at him with more fury than he could ever recall finding in her eyes. “What the f*ck was that?”
The sight of her making out with the man crossed his eyesight, and his own anger grew in response. “You mean you cutting contact?”
Tenten’s fists were balled. “Because you wouldn’t shut up!” she yelled. “I couldn’t think straight with all your ‘Tenten’s.”
“You had to think? Funny. The only thing I could see you using was your tongue.”
Tenten pushed him, but he saw it coming. His feet remained planted as she closed the distance between them threateningly. She had summoned a knife in a hand and was holding it at his side. Neji’s eyes were hard, doing the impossible job of hiding the incredible anger he felt within.
“You wanna say that again?” she whispered up at him.
He held her gaze, a gaze sharp and unyielding. Although his eyes didn’t falter, he didn’t reply.
“I was drugging his drink, f*ckface,” she spat. “So he’d get drunk faster. If you haven’t noticed, I can’t drink for sh*t.”
Neji blinked. He was so occupied in their faces smushed together that he did not think to check her hands’ whereabouts. He felt the knife graze his waist.
His anger began to cool when he made the mistake of glancing down at her lips. Red and swollen. His insides flipped. He grabbed her wrist, the one holding the knife, and pushed her away using it.
“You were on a mission. As your captain, I can’t have you making out with—”
Tenten threw her knife down between his feet, just missing his toes, and he flinched. “Oh, I’m sorry, Captain,” she mocked. “Were your morals worth f*cking over the entire mission?”
He glared at her as she paced back and forth, clearly wanting to punch something.
“sh*tty job you’re doing there, Captain,” she vented more to herself than anyone. “Screwing up a mission this important."
Neji only stared. Her dress had ridden up, way more than it had upon her arrival. Her hair was disheveled and messy from the… the fight, Neji decided. Her back glistened with sweat, a few strands sticking to its upper half, the lower half curving inward then outward to meet her hips.
His hand was halfway up to touch the concave in the small of her back when his senses shot it down. He gulped, shocked, as Tenten continued blabbering on, clueless.
His ears rang. He was jealous. Of course he was. A smile formed on his lips.
For what they call a genius, he decided, he sure was sickeningly slow.
He lunged forward and held Tenten still by her arms. Just before she launched an attack on him, she realized he was smiling.
They stood in a silence that promised Neji infinite possibilities. Neji smiled, and although a little furious still, he tuned it all out. Her dress was pretty and her muscles were firm under his hands and he felt light as a feather, free as a bird.
He wouldn’t speak now, but in his thoughts, he uttered a truth. He would rather ruin a million missions than watch Tenten kiss another guy.
