Hi all! This is a random piece of humorous writing - don't get used to it. ;) Written for white noise and brine, who was kind enough to listen to my suggestion of an all-male knitting group - the majority of the ideas in here are hers. ;)

Written in 2 hours on a Sunday night, which was amazing because I don't write on Sundays, and I have never really written Naruto and Kiba before. :O

Naruto and its characters do not belong to me.

Close Knit Shinobi

Chapter 1: The All-Male Knitting Group

"Damnit, this last mission was horrible! I wanted to finish my scarf when it was my turn to stand guard, but noooo, the enemy nin had to attack on my watch!" Naruto grumbles, collapsing into an armchair. He pulls a mass of lumpy knitting out of his standard-issue backpack, and makes a face at the tangles his bright orange yarn is in. "They didn't even let me untangle all my knots first!"

"You shouldn't allow the yarn ball to stray far from you," Neji advises him sagely, "That way, packing up is easy, especially at the first sign of an enemy approaching."

"Well, I don't have the Byakugan, like you do!" Naruto retorts, to which Lee jumps to his feet, a fierce gleam in his eyes (and a forest-green skein of yarn rolling onto the floor behind him).

"Fear not, Naruto! Together, we can prove that hard work will triumph Neji's genius!" he all but shouts, waving his knitting needles in the air, the stitches sliding precariously along them (and they would have fallen off, if it weren't for the knobs at the ends that prevent them from doing so).

Neji rolls his eyes, and returns to his own masterpiece, a cabled tablecloth for Hiashi-sama's new dining table. Knit-one, purl-two is his mantra, and he prides himself on being able to multitask and focus on both knitting, and the conversation at hand.

"Well, no one is gonna beat me, especially not in my house," Kiba announces from his seat . He makes up the fourth and last member of their all-male knitting group, his current skill level with the hobby on par with Naruto's. (It is no secret that Kiba is inept with knitting, though he is convinced that knowing how to work yarn into beautiful pieces is one of the advantages that he will have with the opposite gender. The haphazard articles that result are tucked quietly away in his room, a massive, colorful bed that Akamaru shares with him.)

"In your opinion," Neji says quietly from his seat, and his gaze never wavers from the royal blue silk yarn being molded between his fingers. The metal tips of his circular needles click furiously as he knits stitch after stitch, to the point where it would require a trained eye (or a Sharingan) to follow his movements. He is the undisputed master of their group, though Lee is convinced that no other knitter in the village can actually surpass Neji's speed and quality. No stitch is ever out of place, no unsightly ends left visible; even the yarns he uses are top quality (never synthetic), and require special care to maintain.

"I'll beat you in this someday, Neji!" Naruto declares, when he's finally sorted his tangles out and is back on track with his striped scarf. (Winter is approaching soon, and Naruto claims that he needs the extra warmth, though wearing scarves on missions are a liability, and any visitor to his shanty apartment would note the gigantic, colorful scarves strewn all over the place. The pieces are sunny and cheerful enough that the average villager would not mind the missed stitches and half-tucked ends trailing from them.) He's come a long way, Neji acknowledges, from when none of his scarves would even turn out uniform, and the knits and purls could not even be told apart. "I've learned a great deal since I joined the group, believe it!"

"I will beat Neji too, Naruto! Your persistence is admirable!" Lee exclaims, exalted tears streaming down his face. "I will finish my sweater by the end of today, or I will knit another ten sweaters before the end of the week as punishment!"

There isn't any doubt that the project he's working on is for Gai-sensei (because few others wear his notoriously green compositions with such pride). Most of Lee's other sweaters go to the village orphanage, or the poor (he knits big hearts onto them sometimes), who cannot afford to turn his gifts of love away. Lee claims that his sweaters help keep the springtime of youth alive in everyone.

"We should have a knitting contest," Kiba announces. "You're knitting in my house, and I form the rules today."

(His family home is, really, one of the only two places they meet to knit, because knitting is frowned on in the Hyuuga compounds, and Naruto's apartment is too small, and too full of giant scarves for there to be sufficient space to even sit. Lee's home is the other meeting spot; they alternate between the locations, so as not to catch color-blindness from the sheer amount of green in Lee's place.)

"What kind of contest?" Lee almost leaps from his seat in excitement. "I'm confident that I'll finally beat Neji this time!"

Neji merely smirks, and Kiba flips him off in an attempt to wipe the smile off his face.

"We will be knitting mittens," Kiba says smugly. "To fit Akamaru."

Three pairs of eyes swivel to face the giant dog lying by Kiba's feet, his paws carefully unwinding yarn from the current skein, so as to achieve the right tension in the yarn leading to Kiba's needles.

A look of distaste flits across Neji's regal features. (Expensive yarn for the mutt?) Lee and Naruto cheer excitedly anyway, even though mittens are not their strong suit. They are going to make up for their lack of expertise with youth and optimism. Kiba only grins, because four new sets of mittens for Akamaru means that he won't have to get them custom-made this winter.

"His paws are eight inches in circumference. I would prefer them to be at least five inches tall each." Kiba looks around at his comrades, and judges the expressions on their faces. He's got to win this competition, because Akamaru is his best friend and he can't let the latter down (and also because he's knitting on home territory, damn it!)

When all four of them have drawn new needles and skeins of yarn out, Kiba does the countdown with intense vigor. "Is everyone ready? On your marks, get set, knit!"

What follows is a long silence and the furious clicking of needles. Surreptitious glances are passed around (mainly to see how far Neji is ahead of each of them), and Adam's apples bob with dry swallows (they're thirsty in this heat, but no one wants to stop, for fear of missing out on precious moments to purl and knit stitches). The atmosphere is so intense that even Akamaru feels it, though he keeps his whines to himself.

The tension thickens when Neji snips his first completed mitten off, and begins on his next. Glances are exchanged; Neji is everyone's least favorite knitter right now.

Time seems to flit by too quickly, when the four men slowly, laboriously, finish their knitting. Neji is, naturally, the first to complete all four mittens, each knitted to perfection, complete with garter stitch hems and hexagonal patterns throughout. Lee is the next to finish, his green mittens almost perfect, though not quite as intricate as Neji's. Kiba's end up a little too small, and Naruto's are speckled with slipped stitches, though still wearable.

The vote is unanimous - Neji wins the competition, hands down, and Kiba mutters bitterly, "What kind of loser likes knitting that much, anyway? You only won because you're weird."

"Your stitches were uneven," Neji tells him primly, and promptly returns to his cabled tablecloth (it has to be ready by tomorrow, when Hiashi reveals the new furniture to the entire household).

The door bursts open suddenly, and Tenten stumbles into the room, her twin buns in a mess. Kiba's sisters trail behind her, protesting her entrance, though Tenten waves them off. "Neji! Lee! Where were you? I searched all over for you and Gai said you'd be here-"

She stops talking abruptly when it dawns on her that four of the most respectable male shinobi in the village are knitting before her very eyes.

"What?" Tenten gapes, and stares, though her eyes finally settle on the intricate tapestry of Neji's tablecloth, and how he stares at her in shock. They've never discussed this in all the years they've trained together. "Th-The Akatsuki are on the move, you guys, Tsunade-sama has summoned us to her office!"

A series of groans and protests are the only response she receives.

"What? I'm not done with the mittens for Akamaru, the loose ends need to be woven in!" Kiba exclaims. "I refuse to leave the competition with unfinished work!"

"Five more minutes," Neji mutters, his needles furiously clicking away. "This tablecloth has to be done by tomorrow."

"Did you not hear me?" Tenten screeches, and grabs Neji by the ear (she is the only one who dares commit such a horrific offense).

"Don't forget to wind your yarn up properly, Naruto!" Lee exclaims. He is the first to finish packing (Neji is the grudging second), and they dash out of Kiba's home, with Tenten following dazedly behind, still quite uncertain about the sight she's just witnessed.

A/N: Don't expect updates to this. ;) It sure cracked me up though!