Title: And It Feels Like

Author: holmesfreak1412

Fandom: Naruto

Pairing: Hyuuga Neji & Hyuuga Hinata

Genre: Romance, Angst

Rating: M for mentions of sex

Summary: Five times Neji and Hinata made love and one time they didn't.

Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Naruto Franchise or any of the Greek Myths mentioned as allusions.

Warning: Incest. Specifically Hyuugacest. Not that it matters if you're here.

Author's Note: Each installment is unconnected with another. Five of which are AU about what could have been and the last is canon-based of what is. Man, I just love the traditional LJ-memes.

I adore NejiHina. They are actually my canon ship (while SasuHina is my fanfiction one) but I guess I prefer them onesided and unrequited from Neji's part. I always have a thing with tragic couples and NejiHina (even before Neji-baby's death) is just one of those that tug in your heartstrings. I have a lot of things against NaruHina so you can't expect me to write something about them anytime soon.

I don't write lemon and if I do, it should probably be classified as something to be shipped into bad adult-fanfiction so this, I warn you, is not much of a stimulating, hot-as-fuck read. It's angst guys and well, I always prefer reading about sex when it's only implied. Blah blah.

UNBETAED. UNEDITED. IDIOSYNCRACIES OVERLOAD. MEH. IT'S PROBABLY HALF-ASSED. BLAME THAT ON MY MESSED UP SLEEP SCHEDULE AND ENGLISH NOT BEING MY FIRST LANGUAGE. My word processor is being a bitch and I haven't really studied grammar in a while so my grasp in the language might not be really good. And well, I only uploaded this on my phone, written only in like three hours and plotted in even lesser time. You know plot bunnies. They practically haunt you in those times they shouldn't. Stupid prepaid internet connection. Stupid university.

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And It Feels Like

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001 Pain

Making love with Hinata is like finally releasing a breath you don't realize you are holding. It is refreshing. Liberating. Like the fast-paced flight ensuing when a caged bird is to be freed. Icarus soaring freely in liberty. Or the excitement of some beast unleashed after eons of imprisonment. The Minotaur finally being freed of his curse. When they do the deed, Neji feels like bursting into a flaming explosion any minute: the fire of their merged passion conflagrating into the unquenchable where any form of relief is but temporary. For each night they spend with each other invariably pushes them together yet again. Hinata's skin, after all feels like ice to his scorching fire—extinguishing his anger and eradicating his worries as an oasis do to a thirsty man. Like the flowing water she is fond of dancing with, making love with Hinata is like the much-wanted consolation in this cruel world. Definitely everything he has ever wished for. When he kisses her, he gives her his all. When she kisses back, he makes sure to take all of hers.

Before then, he couldn't even muster to think more shrewdly about her and perhaps that should have been his biggest mistake. Once upon a time, he did hate her. To him, she was just a girl who had the temerity to be oblivious of the fact that she was the cause of his sorrows. Someone he should always address with the respect he didn't feel. Someone who should be stronger but was not. Someone who was his cousin. Just Hinata who he knew well he hated. Those attributes didn't make her any more likeable than the spoiled heiress he narrow-mindedly perceived her to be. And yet, she did have the uncanny way to be the most unpredictable…

What he hadn't known was that to her, he was the niisan she forever aspired to be. The niisan who came to her rescue (albeit unwillingly) when the bullying from those prickly, neighborhood kids had gone too far. The one who used his taijutsu with much precision to do his duty. The one who told her that being weak like that was becoming too bothersome. Neji, to her, was the infallible boy with the fiery eyes that lit with such determination that his status as being only a Branch House member did not make hindrances in his aim to be the best. He is the boy who didn't speak much but said enough with his pale eyes. He is her inspiration, the boy who finally looked back at her during their fight in the Chuunin Exams. And yes, to her he was the one who taught her that pain is but weakness leaving the body. And she really had to get rid of hers

He is her niisan.

But to her, he was more than just that.

Theirs is a twisted, twisted love/hate relationship.

Pain is good, she realized. And as much as it awfully sounded masochistic for her to gain hope from so queer a manner, the unconsciously lovestruck girl couldn't help but pronounce that the feel of his fist was better than none. So in the end, she continued to love her idol from the side even though each day that they crossed each other in the Hyuuga halls with guilt and wariness overwhelming the atmosphere, only increasingly proves that he might never return her adoration.

But pain is good enough right?

When they make love, it is only to use each other as some form of stress relief. In each ministration, the aftertaste of his lifelong animosity to her existence is still a lingering presence, its enactment almost bordering to the torturous. Pain is good though and truer words are never spoken. For their intimacy at night feels like a delectable escape from their nonchalant, uneventful everyday. And although all they end up doing is to bruise each other in the process, nothing else ever distracts them from the pleasure of each other's company. Like an unspoken truce, they don't dare reevaluate whatever it is that drives them to continue being like this. They just kiss and resume onto being the BDSM pair no one would have expected them to be.

When they do so each night, they give all of theirs. Their hate. Their love. When they find themselves wondering why, it is only logical for them to conclude that after all, there just isn't any other.

For in the end, they have been too obsessed with hating/loving the other for anyone else to matter.

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002 Remedy

Making love with Hinata is like rubbing a miraculous soap over a leper's skin, a cure that is so one-of-a-kind that wars can be easily waged upon its acquirement. Like the love of Helen of Troy, it feels so good and yet so vilely deceptive. But in desperation, one can never really think twice and again of that. It is purely a question of instinct. When in post-medication trance after the life-changing experience of fighting Kidomaru, Neji kisses Hinata for the first time; he is surprised when he doesn't feel any regret at all and just felt it was right thing to do at this time, with her fresh breath that smells of mint inches away, as his drive for survival tries to keep him from losing track of his. The kiss is short, a chaste contact that barely leaves an impression but it is there nevertheless. A shocked Hinata stares at him as they part but no words of complaint or remonstrance ever escapes her lips. She is too good for that. He then faints afterwards and when after he wakes up, Hinata acts like nothing happened between them, sheer consolation floods his soul. She still smiles in the same way at him and Neji sometimes wonder about the reason why even at the wake of their steadily growing relationship, she still chose to forget.

When five years later as she herself is deathly sick and was stuck in the confused tug-of-war with Hades, she kisses him too; he is at loss about what to feel over the fact that even after all these years, she might not have forgotten of his search for a cure once. His little love declaration. The admission that he wanted to live for her. His heart had been broken so much in the past and sweet, little Hinata was the only one who was still there for him, promptly volunteering to mend it like the good cousin that she likes to think she is. It was only reasonable to have his subconscious single her out as the one he needed. The one, he daresay it… loved. By the time they were they were on their late teens, the news of her hopelessly unrequited love with the village hero was already all over town and as he starts to kiss all her tears away in her self-induced illness, Neji knows it's now or never. And so like a man in a fulfilled dream, he makes love to her, if only to return the favor back then through giving her what she has always wanted for as long as he watched over her. The love of another. The feeling of being wanted. A sacrifice made for her. Neji didn't give her a lot of things. But this at least, was one of the few exceptions.

The next day, she wakes up without any recollection as to who she was, amnesiac as she was forcefully rendered by her beloved niisan, who only wanted the two of them to start over again, with nothing to worry about behind their backs.

Forgetting is a nice way to heal. At least, he could wholeheartedly give her as much.

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003 Hurt

Making love with Hinata is like painfully burning in the abyss of hell en route to the bliss of heaven. Like the wearisome trek up the mountains for the honor of being there in the summit. Like a perilous voyage towards an unknown, uncharted shore. Fortunately, it's not at all a hopeless Sisyphean task. Or like the trip with the ferryman Charon to hell. For one of the things that ever made it pleasurable is the thought that when it finally culminates, it should be. Perhaps more like rubbing disinfectant on a bleeding wound. It hurts until it no longer does, replaced as it is by the feeling of freedom from the excruciating pain. Numbness can be ecstasy. So to speak, the end justifies the means. And like how he had always imagined, hating his Lady Hinata for years had been worthy enough when in the end, he had come to loving her as unconditionally as a loyal knight would.

But as he lets himself slowly move against her amidst the dazed moans of pleasure (meanwhile with her crying out a names that isn't his), his heart, as much as he had already made it as hard as stone, only wrenches into irreparable smithereens. Resilience pales into the vulnerable as he sees her in hopeless lamentation for a lost love, her feeble attempts to wake up from what she wished to be just a cruel nightmare only adding to her painful confusion. His identity to her has never been compromised until now. But he doesn't have the heart to remind her so.

All the way, he only comfortingly holds her hand and never tries to be her solace through words. He has never been one to speak. They all come out wrong and unwanted anyway so better it is to keep silence lest he hurt her further. For tonight, he was hers and maybe for forever and another day, even though the harsh reality is probably that for the rest of his forsaken life as one who merely is stuck in the one side of the love line, she is never meant to be his in the first place.

He has enough sins to pay for. And so many doings he could regret to be worthy of her anyway.

The worldly sensation being too much is their undoing and as they come together, Neji doesn't dwell much on the possible connotation that could be easily derived from their mutual orgasm. Chemistry, after all is not the foremost issue here. Nor is the prospect of another night like this any more tantalizing at the light of what he just did to get this one night with his Lady. His main concern instead is the feeble hope that she could finally sleep and stay with him meanwhile futilely lying to himself that it is not purely physical exhaustion that has momentarily muted her sobs of grief.

It had been him who had come first by her side when with her child, she had fallen onto the ground in desperation, calling out the name of a husband that was the dreadful cause of what he was seeing. The damage had stretched even through the edge of his own extended vision. Konoha had been mercilessly razed into shambles, a bloody aftermath that had any other destructive invasion in history pale in comparison. The rampage had gone on fire and wide, annihilating anything that came within its path like the beast of twenty years ago would and destroying everything into the unrecognizable. Even with Hinata sobbing desperately in pleading for her husband's safety against all odds, he had no choice. This was the moment when Neji found himself willingly relinquishing his reservations and ultimately forget that the man that was the disaster named Kyuubi then had once been Hinata's man. Naruto…

He was once a husband. He was once a father. He was once… Neji's friend.

But nevertheless when a severely weakened Naruto had come to him with the little sanity he still had left and begged for his own end, Neji hadn't hesitated at all. For the better good, he killed him, the endeavor becoming almost an effortless job as Naruto's submission came into aid. Naruto had always been one to take the entire burden and ending it all for him was the best repentance he could have done. In his face as he perished was only a contented, thankful smile to which only motivated Neji further to just quickly and neatly drive the kunai into his deteriorating heart. He had broken his promise, yes but this; he thought was only the best for Hinata-sama…

When the elders had sealed the Kyuubi again to Naruto and Hinata's son, Neji had wondered whether he really had done the right thing.

They stay together. Him and Hinata. Making love. Or maybe it was only just some pity fucking. And as she weeps in vain for her dishonored lover and unfortunate offspring, he never had the guts to confess to her that he in fact, was the one who wielded the executioner's blade.

After all, even being the hero of the village doesn't keep him from blaming himself from what he had to do with Hinata and her son once the time of another one of the Kyuubi's ill-fated jailbreak comes again.

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004 Comfort

Making love with Hinata is like fulfilling a duty one is fated to take. Like completion. Like accomplishment. Like the one thing he somehow realized he had been living for all along. And maybe that should be taken quite literally for the first in the longest time, here was Neji wanting to do what he had to. And come to think of it, maybe fate in the Hyuuga clan isn't so bad after all.

When they make love for the first time, it is to obey what every self-respecting and patriotic Hyuuga was bound to do one way or another eventually. Inbreeding, after all is by no means a strange concept in old-fashioned clans such as theirs who preferred their bloodline limit as pure and untainted as possible. Arrogant traditionalist bastards they were but it was necessary. The Hyuuga clan is not the oldest family without sacrifices. And only select people ever get spared from the worse of those. To be granted permission to marry outside the clan, one was required to contribute to the clan's waning population first and the best way to do so was the natural way. To finally marry Uzumaki Naruto, it was obligatory for Hinata to be impregnated first for her more powerful Main House genetic strain to prosper. It was painfully absurd but then again, it had to be done.

When this was cruelly demanded from her, Hinata had all but unceremoniously threw herself at him. Her cousin. Her niisan. Neji. And he was a man too and had he been a lot shallower, he would have easily grabbed the opportunity as in truth, what was Hinata, if she wasn't dangerously attractive? But he loved his cousin and as much as he didn't like the idea of him being merely a instrument for a broodmare, this was something he couldn't bring himself to deny. His Lady never asked for a single thing before and having her one and only request before her renouncement as a Hyuuga to be ruthlessly declined was something she surely would not appreciate. Neji didn't want that. And so like someone who was so much of a romantic he only yearned to be rewarded a smile of sheer gratitude from his princess; Neji reluctantly agreed.

The first night she came to him, Neji made love to her. And more after that. And more. And more. And more. Each time his attempts of implanting his seed into her failed to yield the much awaited positive sign, they made love more. More and more and more that pretty soon, it had become an obsession. Unknowingly, it had also become a routine. They start to see each other more as each passing day of disappointment became another day for them to be regarded as the comfort to each other's sorrow. Her passionate kisses are for his untold, unrequited love for her and her way of consoling it. His unwavering perseverance for their aim is his acknowledgement of her forbidden affection for another that is not supposed to be hers. For what makes him any different? It is a sacrifice she learns to admire. And so in such frenzy, she lets him kiss her everywhere, anywhere, anytime. In selfish return, he does this as well anywhere, everywhere, anytime. So in the end, that was probably the reason why they were ironically pretty much discouraged when finally, they had to stop.

And why neither is really surprised when they both tacitly start calling the worm that was forming inside her, their "first" child.

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005 Weakness

Making love with Hinata feels like a grave but so much of an imperative surrender to his worst enemy: something that at another time had his ease had not depended on the deed, he would have immediately, actively abhorred, as tantamount as he considers it is to a very much unwanted burden. Making love with her after all, was yet another responsibility to be shouldered, for Hinata was his sole weakness and the last thing he ever needed in habiting this world was having one to derail him of what he was meant to do. He could have easily imagined how the legendarily invulnerable Achilles would have felt if he knew of the additional weight of a redundant and far-from-harmless weakness he had for an ankle beforehand. As desperate as those times of war were, equally desperate measures would have been more than conceivable and Achilles severing off such useless article would have been much more of an asset than him walking properly in a march. Nobody in these moments of strife would ever want a weakness to be exploited by adversaries, for what else they would cause but such a gruesome, unnecessary death? But then this act of making love with Hinata… is starting to change Neji's mind.

Maybe what the romantics had always told the unbelieving masses held some plausible truth—that despite those "erroneous" indignant depiction people all see in the paintings, Achilles may have really smiled upon being impaled by an arrow at where his mother had held him while he was amidst the unimaginable power of the Styx. A weakness makes one feel normal somehow and being human was something any lifelong automaton could readily ask Kami-sama for as some form of death wish. Making love with Hinata makes Neji realize that for so long, this actually is what he had always secretly wanted. To be close to her in ways that is more than just platonic. To protect her from those that try to hurt her. To have her vulnerable, little body for himself. Hinata-sama is his weakness and his budding relationship with her would have been so much of a major liability, had he himself not been willing to feel like the human she thinks him to be just for once.

For a moment while holding her obliging body in his arms, he forgets that they are in another war, that the world as they know it is not in mortal danger, that they are all safe and sound and very much home in the confines the Hyuuga compound provides and not in a measly issued tent in which other eyes could easily pry. The reality is then bound to be ignored as Neji tries not to think about the fact that amidst her clouded and grudging submission in gratitude, Hinata is only thinking about her Naruto-kun. How is he… how she wants nothing more but to be in anyplace else… Not that she didn't enjoy it… But well, she still has her pride to grieve over her lost chastity… How she feels sorry for her niisan for being forced to stick with her just because she still has her shyness to overcome… Not knowing that he too, is marginally blaming himself for being so selfish so as to take advantage of the situation…

She is his weakness.

She will be the death of him.

For in their largely (and unfairly) misogynistic shinobi society, this is what kunoichis are cruelly, generally branded as. A burden. A liability. A chair you are expected to carry around while navigating a tricky obstacle course. In these times of war likewise, these verbal maltreating and demeaning is not to be rendered in stoppage either. For like it was a pre-written rule, kunoichis are certainly never meant to be major assets in military combat- just those people who worked in the sidelines in more ways than one and aiding the shinobis who are thereby in charge of keeping them safe. While indeed the women are considered more useful now than they ever were, this sugarcoating of their role was not entirely so. Kunoichis are deemed helpful, yes. They are seen as much as an inspiration as they are weakness, yes. But that is only because, they have breasts and they are well… women.

During war, it is of no strange an occurrence for the once burning adrenaline to temporarily wear off when the telltale calm before the storm surfaces as some form of a ceasefire, a mutual agreement from both opposing sides to momentarily hold their horses while they mourn of their possible demise in the next day. More often than not, this is when being a woman comes into torturous roleplay. For the weary warriors only wanted some action for the night to keep them from thinking about so darkly consuming thoughts as death and if anything, just to make them feel what is still there left to feel. While they still can. These times of carefree camaraderie, they pick up girls like cows for the night and as much as it is drilled to them that they are only but "dependents", the unfortunate kunoichi has no choice but to just strip away and do these men favors. This, after all is the only way they can ever be of use. And the only manner they can ever be subtly thanked for in the aftermath.

In the ninja world, females don't make heroes.

They are just an abominable, needless… weakness.

Violent fights inevitably break for the girl with the most demand and shy Hinata is just so desirable for the gullible male population that Neji has to go through numerous arm-wrestling just to keep those dogs from ever corrupting Hinata's exuding innocence and to finally win her company for the night. He wouldn't have done anything else had she only kept her hands wisely to herself but when she gratefully embraces him like she always wanted to with her inhibitions still reserved for the more appropriate time… everything changes.

He is drowning in her. And Neji would have realized that him being unable to swim through the intoxicating feel of her body underneath his would easily merit a great disadvantage in the battlefield. But at the heat of the moment, what is more of a pressing matter for him is him and her, their bare bodies connected together as one as if they are just separated from birth. This is when he concludes that he can hold her in his arms forever and never ever desire to let go.

He wants her around when the storm comes.

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006 Strength

Making love with Hinata could have been his strength—more like something to look forward to every night, worth living for everyday.

But in his last struggles of breath, Neji thinks that dying for her is a much better way to express his ways.

Because nothing exceeds the pleasure of rising to the best of enlightenment.

Making love with Hinata might feel like…

Loving Hinata feels like…

Dying for Hinata feels like…

He smiles. Father, I finally understand.

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END

The last one is pretty short I know. But then again in canon, nothing happened so it would be a bit overbearing to overemphasize what could be as well be said in a few words. Lol. I must say this is only concocted the other day after reading through my antonym-synonym assignment and I was like… what the hell, I want to write something. I would have written SasuHina but my Neji muse is begging to be in the spotlight of my mind for once. I like him more than Sasuke anyway since he has more realistic angst. Although I must say, I prefer reading about SasuHina (and hoping against hope for them to come true)

Reviews are appreciated. :D Constructive critics are loved. While flames are to be tolerated. I would prefer not to receive any bashings about the couple though.

Tell me what you think.

Please review.