Late entry for NTmonth 2019... I started this after a conversation with Rochelle (bunrising) on the NejiTen discord: I argued that Neji probably has a complicated coffee order. And we all I'm right.

I know it's terribly Canadian of me, but I included Anne of Green Gables in there. I tried to keep spoilers to a minimum, but some things couldn't be avoided... (I WANT THEM TO BOND OVER BOOKS! :O)

Bonus: Mutual pinning *waggles her eyebrows*

This is a two-parter. First part is in Tenten's POV, the second in Neji's POV. Enjoy!

"You said you would be done by 6, so we could work on our project."

Tenten stiffened at the sound of his cold voice, clutching the rag until her hand trembled. She could feel his eyes on her. Her shoulders tensed. She wiped the counter harder.

Of course, he wouldn't be late.

Or dead in a ditch somewhere like she hoped.

"Tenten." he repeated impatiently, his eyes piercing through her. "Did you hear me?"

Inhaling sharply to calm down, Tenten turned slowly toward him, fingers curling around the rag. Water leaked down her wrist.

Neji still wore his school uniform, his tie neatly tied and covering the buttons of his shirt. His lips thinned in displeasure.

"Are you deaf?"

Tenten blew loose strands out of her sweaty face, then smiled placidly at him.

"No, unfortunately, I can hear your annoying voice," Tenten said with mocked cheerfulness, and threw the rag on the counter next to the coffee machine.

"That makes two of us," he replied coldly.

He held up his watch in front of her face.

"Nice watch," she said coolly.

"It's two past six, hurry up. I don't have all evening."

Tenten rolled her eyes.

She wished he was dumb. And ugly.

She hated how impressive he was, how he aced everything, the captain and president of all the intellectual clubs she would never dare attend. She hated how small he made her feel, always reciting facts as if she knew nothing.

"As a genius, you can wait five minutes, can't you?"

Tenten leaned over the counter and pointed at one of the empty tables by the windows.

His pale eyes flickered across her face, and she felt herself flush under the intensity of his gaze. She stopped herself from touching her face, brushing aside her hair. Fixing herself. 'Not for him,' she vowed silently. He always looked at her intensely, as if he was rearranging her in his mind, piecing her together in a way he could tolerate.

"My prefrontal lobe is indeed substantially developed for the delayed gratification of us finishing our project."

"Are you flirting or bragging? I can never tell."

He pinched his lips.

"I'm going to have a coffee."

"Sure," Tenten said through her fake smile as she reached for a coffee cup.

"You didn't ask what size," Neji frowned.

"Oh, I know the size you want. As large as what you hope your brain is."

Neji raised an eyebrow, and his lip trembled with disgust. Tenten almost flinched away from him. Somehow, she always said the wrong things around him.

And she craved his attention, eyes that didn't harden when they searched hers, lips that didn't curl up in disgust, in distrust, snapping back at her the "obvious answer".

She lively shook her head. She was not falling for some romantic notion of him being decent again. Not ever.

"Einstein had a small brain but more white matter than average," Neji said slowly interrupting her trail of thoughts. Her heart pounded, deafening. He truly thought she was stupid. "It's wrong of you to assume-"

"Hyuuga, you're holding the line with your flirting," Tenten cut him off in a whiny voice, annoyed.

"I'm most definitely not-" Neji huffed, scandalized, his hands automatically reaching up to rearrange his tie.

"The lineeee!" she drawled out in a high-pitched voice that made him wince.

"A latte. Half coconut milk, half almond milk. No foam, please," his mouth curled up in disgust, and he paused. "There was foam last time."

"And what's your name?" Tenten asked with saccharine venom.

"You know my name," Neji frowned.

She batted her eyelashes at him.

"Sorry, this is corporate policy," Tenten sighed, tilting her head back and forth, her voice lively, and she tapped her pen on the cup to emphasize her point. "Gotta ask, then scribble it on the cup."

"Neji," he said through gritted teeth.

"I'm sorry, what was that? 'Majy'?" She innocently widened her eyes at him.

"Neji," Neji snapped, and she heard the sharp thud as he dropped his wallet on the counter.

"Mhm, so Neji..." Tenten chewed on her bottom lip, her pen tracing a line, before she striked it out and shook her head. "Oh shoot, is that an N or an M?"

"N."

"I didn't catch that," she sighed dramatically and scratched her scalp with her pen. "I'm just so slow today, sorry. So, is it n like nanny or m like Manny?"

Neji pinched his lips, as she pretended to smile politely, patiently. His credit card shook in his grip, and she wondered if somewhat he felt like she did whenever he spoke: suddenly unsure of his identity, confidence quivering, slipping through cracks she never knew were there.

"Call your manager," Neji ordered darkly.

Tenten wrote it on the cup in a slow gesture, mouthing each word.

"Coming right up, Call Your Manager," Tenten said sweetly, and she ripped his credit card out of his grip to ring his order up.

Tenten slammed the cup on the counter next to the coffee machine, then leaned over the cash register handing him back his credit card.

Neji opened his mouth, struggling, his lips disappeared in a grim line, his eyes hardening. He didn't step aside, his hands reaching again for his tie, hesitating.

"NEXT!" Tenten shouted, narrowing her eyes at him.

Neji turned on his heels sharply, and walked toward one of the tables next to the windows and the farthest from the entrance.

As Tenten served another customer, she watched him pull out his notebook, his textbook and the book they were reading in English class: Anne of Green Gables. He rearranged the table, fanning out his pens, so that everything was laid out neatly, efficiently.

She sighed deeply and bent down to retrieve the milk from the fridge under the counter.

Tenten hadn't known Neji when they had been paired up in English class. She knew he was the captain of the soccer and hockey teams. She had admired and cheered for him for from afar. She had romantic notions about him then; he had a deep baritone voice that rumbled through her and intense eyes that made the world faded out when he talked to her.

He had been none of that.

His voice was like dry ice, toxic to her and her self-doubts. And her imagination. He nitpicked, dissected every word, constantly correcting her as if she was a child.

His eyes reflected nothing when he talked to her.

Her admiration for him, her giddiness at being paired up with him had curdled quickly after their first assignment.

Tenten couldn't believe she was stuck with the jerk until the end of the semester because she had let her imagination run wild about the handsome boy who had everything.

And her feelings for the jerk were as complicated as his coffee order. Half infatuation. Half hatred.

Tenten roughly pressed the ground coffee in the group handle. Then, with a flick of the wrist, she screwed it in one of the group heads. She pressed the double espresso shot button on the machine. The machine whirred, familiar, safe, unlike how she felt close to Neji. While the coffee dripped in a creamy caramel colour in the cup, she heated the milk with the milk frother, standing still, so no foam would form.

The coffee swirled, paling, thinning, when she added the milk to the cup.

Tenten gripped the cup, squared her shoulders, and sighed one last time before marching toward him.

"Call Your Manager, here you go," Tenten said as she set the cup in front of him.

Ignoring his glare, she sat down at the table, and threw her crumpled apron on the other chair.

"So..." Tenten began then snapped her mouth shut when she saw him lift the lid off his cup. "There's no foam, you jerk," she snapped.

"There was last time," Neji replied smoothly, and closed back the lid.

"You're unbelievable," Tenten snorted.

"Yes, I'm above average in numerous areas including sport, debate, and-"

"Okay, sorry I asked," Tenten cut him off and flipped through the guidelines of their project.

Neji watched her carefully, his expression unreadable, and she re-read the same sentence over and over again. 'Discuss one of the themes explored in class for Anne of Green Gables while taking into account the socioeconomical reality of the time.'

"You shouldn't interrupt people, it's rude," Neji said after a while.

"Yeah, my mom told me, but then… I don't care," Tenten gave him an empty smile, and opened her own books. "Just be grateful, I'm not going violent-Anne on you... annoying-Gilbert."

"What about your father?"

Neji cleared his throat, and avoided her startled gaze as she looked up.

"Again, are you flirting or bragging about your superior breed?"

"I was making polite conversation," Neji said icily and took a sip of his drink.

He flinched, and Tenten rolled her eyes.

"What's wrong with it, now?"

"This is all coconut milk," he pushed the cup back toward her. "Do it again."

'Crap, he noticed,' Tenten thought.

"Say the magic word."

"My patience is running thin."

"Do you even know how to spell patience? Or do you just use that word as a synonym for tolerance to avoid repetitions?"

Neji leaned forward, joining his hands together on the table, poised, icy.

Tenten hated that pose. It aged him 30 years, and he alway paused, rearranging his posture, until he was authority on the subject he was about to discuss.

"Did you read the book in its entirety?" Neji asked in a low voice.

"Yeah," she replied dryly. "I even passed the quiz. Imagine that."

"Then, you should know that if you compare me to Gilbert, I'll win against you," he nodded toward her, sharply, the rest of him completely immobile. "Anne conforms in the end," he said slowly, and her face wrinkled briefly.

In the book, Anne was the girl that didn't belong anywhere. She spoke too loudly, she was too direct, too frivolous. She lived in a fantasy world that allowed escapism from her miserable life, and threw her in sentimentality. And it brought catastrophe after catastrophe. Anne needed to conform, everyone agreed.

Her heart hammered against her ribs, her skin flushed. Wasn't she in this messy unbalanced partnership because she once thought Neji was a prince charming?

Wasn't she Anne?

"You didn't read the other books, did you?" Tenten said and looked away.

Neji frowned, caught-off guard. His shoulders tensed, and he withdrew his hands from the table. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his fingers rearranging their textbooks and notebooks.

"Only this one was assigned," Neji said carefully and narrowed his eyes at a stain around his cup. "You can't just... You just can't..." He repeated.

"Yeah, well, I'm a bookworm and I read them all," Tenten shrugged, and balanced herself on her chair's back legs. "Anne whoops Gilbert's ass. They end up married. I bet she spanks him too."

"I-I..." Neji flustered and coughed, the rest of the words stuck in his throat.

"Alright, now that we've established that you're as uncomfortable with the notion of sex as a Victorian Lord, can we just do this thing?"

"Hn," he nodded stiffly, the tip of his ears still pink, his nose almost touching the pages of his open notebook.

"Are you watching me mop just so you can feel superior?" Tenten scoffed and wiped at her brow.

"No." Neji leaned over the door watching her silently.

Soft warm light bathed the coffee shop, as the sun set. Dusk stirred dust. Everything gleamed between them, their skins orange and yellow. The shadows of the flipped chairs on the tables grew elongated on the checkered floor.

Carelessly, Tenten dropped the bucket on the floor and groaned. Neji tensed, and lifted himself from the door as the water whooshed and splashed around the bucket.

"Careful-"

"The manager is also gone if you're sticking around for him," Tenten interrupted him roughly, and her face wrinkled in concentration as she moped a particularly resistant stain behind the counter.

He stared at the agitated water, his jaw clenched.

"I'm waiting for you," Neji admitted.

"What?" she screeched and whirled back toward him.

"It's late," he shrugged faintly. "I'm giving you a lift."

Tenten narrowed her eyes at him, as if debating whether he was laughing at her or not.

His uniform was still creaseless, his lips pressed together so tightly, they almost disappeared. And his eyes reflected nothing, but they bore through her.

"No, thanks," Tenten said flatly and returned to her moping.

"Don't be stubborn."

"Look, you make me think chivalry is dead. All the time," she said angrily. "So, you don't have to pretend you can be nice to me."

Neji approached the counter, frowning down at her.

"Chivalry was a moral code for knights during battles. I don't see how it applies here."

"Then, what is it about?" Tenten snapped and spun back toward him, holding the mop up. "Why are you waiting for me?"

"It's polite…" Neji cleared his throat. "And we're partners. Partners drive each other home. It's only decent."

"I relieve you from your politeness and decency duties," Tenten drew a cross in the air. "Amen. Now, bye."

"I don't like when you're sarcastic with me."

"Well, I really don't like you, so..." Tenten choked on each word.

Neji blinked, appalled, the colours draining from his face.

"What did I do?" he said softly.

"You wouldn't compromise on anything!" she shrieked, and the mop crashed on the floor. "You rejected all of my ideas and rewrote all of my sections. This is why I'm not serving you your crappy weird coffee. You're a terrible partner!"

"You said, you wanted a good grade!" Neji protested matching her voice with agitation. "My grades are better than yours. It's only logical that we would forgo your interpretations and take mine."

Tenten threw back her head, her eyes burning with the tears building up. She pinched her nose, her mouth twisted, and she tapped her feet on the ground. Once, twice. She stiffened. Her body vibrated.

She refused to cry.

"Oh my god, for a genius, you're so stupid," she muttered and turned about from him.

"That's an oxymoron."

Tenten closed her eyes.

She played with her necklace.

She needed him gone.

"Good night, Hyuuga."

Neji reached over the counter and caught himself before he could touch her. With widened eyes, he brushed her sleeve, his mouth agape.

Startled, she looked at the place he had touched, her chest heaving.

"What do you think you're doing?" she asked darkly, and all her warmth left her.

"I'm sorry," Neji said quickly and held his hands up in an appeasing gesture. "I always… speak with reason, and sometimes I don't take pathos into consideration."

"Did you just dumb down logos for me, but not pathos?" Tenten laughed humourlessly.

"I'm not good like you with emotions," Neji coughed, glancing away from her. "Maybe like Gilbert."

"What?" Tenten snapped.

"Nothing. I just... Hn. I truly thought..." Neji winced, and glanced away. "I truly thought I was being a good partner to you. I apologize."

"Well, you weren't," Tenten said quietly, and picked the mop up. "I'm not taking your lift."

Moments later, the door shut softly behind him, the chiming bell chilling her.

She slid down on the wet floor.

She panted, her head dropping to her knees. She swallowed hard, her hands gripping at her sides.

There were times she wanted to peel off her skin, carve out her bones, and see someone else underneath. Some perfect shorter princess with more fashion sense.

Someone, anyone, who belonged with Neji Hyuuga.

This is different from the stuff I normally write, but I needed some lighter stuff.

Next and final chapter will be posted next week! Huehueheuhe

Please take the time to review! :D