"S-sakura-san?" Hinata hates herself for sounding like a twelve year old, but really, there is no comfortable way to open this. "Do you know if… if Sasuke-san is… is—"
"Gay?" Sakura has had enough people ask her this that she recognizes the signs almost immediately. That now even Hinata is wondering is just too funny. "Don't actually know. Are you interested?"
"I think… I think my family doesn't want him to be," she admits softly. Sakura is looking at her like the answers will appear in black ink on her skin.
"You mean they want you… and him?"
"Hianta could set any man straight," chirrups Ino, twining herself about her friends in greeting. "Who are we talking about?"
"Uchiha Sasuke," Sakura informs her shortly.
"The Hyuuga live as much in the past as they do in the future," Hinata manages to get out. "This would be a golden opportunity for them, the Uchiha beholden to the Hyuuga, and the promise of a generation stronger than me. I think it would be a convenience if they could persuade him… but-but some think that… that he doesn't like girls that way."
"Probably not," the blonde agrees easily. "Even when we were twelve, I was the hottest thing this side of the desert."
"Hey, he turned me down too," snaps the other.
"And for what, a transsexual freak with some serious fetish issues. It'd be perfectly natural if he were still questioning," she responds blithely.
Sakura purses her lips and decides that the conversation needs to take a turn. However comfortable Ino is with her sexuality and everybody else's, Hinata is disproportionately uncomfortable with it.
"Shall we go for ramen, or did you have some place different in mind?"
Neji improves with every mission he took, she can see it. He is matching Lee blow for blow, and her noodles are growing cold, dangling from her chopsticks, as she watches them. Sakura flinches at each dull thud of flesh, no doubt imagining all the healing she will have to do. Hinata is trying to persuade her body not to indulge in hormones, and she thinks maybe she can convince herself it's working. Her lunch falls forgotten to the ground when Neji takes a weighted foot to his ribcage. She doesn't think to wonder about what could distract him so much he didn't dodge or brace himself for the hit. All that matters at the moment is pushing away the edges of his keikogi to carefully press her fingers into the bruising white skin and let the green glow of chakra seep into his body. She finds chakra burns on the marble of his chest, but says nothing, letting the reproach in her eyes speak for her. He is stately and arrogant and if he thinks he can fight her father and then Rock Lee without any reparations, the humiliation he suffers is more punishment than anything she can say. Sakura lets her be, because Hinata knows better than anyone else the kind of damage the Juuken can do. Sakura pulls her energetic boyfriend away, thinking of all the things she might do to shut him up. She tells him any other girl would be jealous he's devoting that much energy to another man, teammate or not. She only half hears him declaring to prove his love, but the dragging goes much easier.
She has the loose sleeves off his arms faster than he can blink, and the scarlet dotting his skin is glaringly obvious and she does what she can without asking. Her hands caress as they cure, something she doesn't realize she does, but he is all too aware of it. Finally he can take no more and stills her hands under his own.
His hands burn hers with an intensity that has nothing to do with chakra.
He bathes just before sunset, so the maids must wait till he is done to light the tapers in the aged bathhouse. Neji is somewhere, and Sasuke has been behaving well enough, or taking enough of Hanabi's hits, that they don't believe he will be able to do anything in a bathtub. He enjoys this moment of privacy, he can't see much in the bloody light of a dying day, but he knows where everything is now, and he'd rather not look at himself while he washes. He is drying himself when he hears the whisper of slippers outside. He doesn't much care; god knows how many people have seen him naked; on purpose, by accident, because they were sealing away his life… The horrified gasp identifies it as the Heiress herself, and the door slams.
She is blushing furiously, knowing that Sasuke still has his fangirls, knowing that they would kill her if they knew what she has just seen. The last Uchiha, white jade skin illuminated by the red, red sun and her wavering lamp, water beading from his hair sliding down his back. She's still just a teenager, but she hurriedly stamps down the thought of licking off every drop. She can not afford to behave in any unseemly manner. Even if her family is toying with idea of adding Sasuke to the gene pool.
The door opens, and Sasuke, yukata belted loosely, steps out.
"Bath's free," he states blandly, and heads back to his room. He hears the door close, and tries not to think about how his eyes drank in the swell of her breasts peeking out from the edge of her yukata, the dark shadow above the slit of her legs, the sight of her toes curling as she shrank herself into another heated blush.
She slides into the hot water, lets it steal the heat from her burning red skin. She's no stranger to desire; she feels a twinge of jealousy when she sees Ino and Shikamaru walking a careful distance apart after they've ducked into the archive room or the furious crimson stain on Lee's cheeks after Sakura has taken him into her mouth against a training post. She doesn't need to be Akamaru to know Kiba has been getting laid regularly, because he walks with a satisfied swing to his step, and if possible, the look of him is more feral than before. She thinks it might be Naruto, and if so, that would explain why no one's caught them. Kiba would like it rough, Naruto rougher, and no bed is going to hold up against the two of them together. She knows what it is to crave sensations, until now she hadn't thought about who would be on the other side. The feel of Neji's chest coupled with the sight of Sasuke's body would drive any woman to blasphemy, and it's not fair that she must be the untouchable princess in this story.
She stays too long in the bath, trying to wash away unclean thoughts, and she has to run to get to her rooms. She nearly slams into Neji, but quick reflexes on her part, and quicker reflexes on his keep, the damage to a minimum. Drops of water pool around her feet and she bows in apology before darting into her rooms, flicking cool beads from the ends of her hair; sharp stinging sensations against the sudden fire on his skin. He can not stay like this, feeling her presence through a fragile paper door, knowing how the cotton material clings to all the sinful places, knowing that she's peeling it away to pull on a silkhadajuban.
They want a formal dinner tonight, acknowledging him as a guest for the first time. Thekimono he wears is a dull blue that reflects black; it was in the assortment of things someone brought back from the Uchiha household. He kneels on the tatami, waiting for the rest of his hosts to seat themselves. The little girl is in smoky green, bamboo shoots growing from the hem. The other wears pale pink silk blossoming with ume flowers. He thinks the obi might be the same color as the zori Neji was mending before.
He is watching her cousin watch her. The Hyuuga genius can't seem to tear his eyes away from the Heiress for very long. He glances at her every now and then, wondering if she is really that fascinating. He turns his gaze just in time to see her delicately consume a piece of squid, mouth working to chew and swallow. Suddenly, his own rice bowl is more enthralling than watching Neji make an idiot of himself. Someone sets a glass down for him, pouring sweet liquor over the chunk of ice.
"Umeshu," Hiashi informs him blandly, marking the Uchiha's eyes flicker to his elder daughter and then to the blooming plum tree decorating themaemigoro. The Hokage may have been right. It will be easier to keep him now that part of his goals has been reached.
Sasuke sips the liquor carefully, rolling it over his tongue, tasting every nuance of flavor, still gazing at the Heiress from behind charcoal lashes.
"At the very least, Uchiha Sasuke, I hope the House of Hyuuga has not offered you so great a slight you are unhappy here."
"If anything, I worry more about offending the Hyuuga," he snaps politely, like a wire taut between two trees.
"They will learn to accept that a person's heart can change with time. Isn't that right, my nephew?"
Neji nods deferentially, implacably cool mask in place, but the corner of his mouth betrays a slight twitch.
"All of us do shameful things for the most important beliefs in our hearts." Hiashi looks toward his daughters with regret and pride. "I would not be displeased if the Uchiha and the Hyuuga were one once more."
There is a clatter, chopsticks clinking against bowls; Hinata pulls Hanabi's sleeve away from the brazier holding a teapot. Hanabi is staring at her father, even though her eyes are fixed on the slowly spreading stain of Hinata's umeshu.
Hiashi ignores his daughters, even though he is still looking at them. "A strong leader who doesn't care what lines are crossed or who is offended, for the Hyuuga and for the Village. We can not be a clan if the ties between us are severed so easily."
He has escaped into the garden, an hour to himself while his keeper tells what little there is to know of Uchiha Sasuke. He finds he is not alone, but he doesn't really care. The Heiress is about as good conversational company as the aesthetically pleasing dead tree in the corner.
"Do you want to be aninja again, Sasuke?" she asks of the silence, surprising him a little. "Do you miss going outside the walls of the village, seeing things and people, being able to do things?"
"Seen enough, done too much," is all she gets in reply.
She stares down at her feet, abashed. Sasuke notes the near seamless repairs done to the brocade of the hanao. He imagines Neji using the byakugan to thread the straps through the soles.
"You want to be sent out on C ranked missions?" he asks, a modicum of guilt plucking at him.
"I want to do something. Until I can fulfill my role among the Hyuuga, all I do is wait here and watch the other shinobi being dragged back bleeding from another incomplete mission. Neji is the only activeninja who knows the Hakke Rokujūyon Shō or Hakkeshō Kaiten, the secret techniques of the soke. Surely the pride of the Hyuuga is not worth the lives that might be saved. I want to protect it all; my family, my friends, all of you."
Maybe there is something going for the Hyuuga Heiress. Something in him is reacting to her, it makes him want to help her, or maybe it's the alcohol.
"You can't even protect yourself from your own family," he says anyway, because he's Uchiha Sasuke and he'd be damned if he were nice to a girl.
"You'd be amazed what a ninja is capable of when she has something she wants to cherish." She smiles at him serenely, like she knows something he has no comprehension of, except that he does, because he had a dream once, and he's only fulfilled part of his goal.
"And you know how strong shinobi who do nothing but destroy can become?"
"I have my nindo. I must grow to defend it; that is why we hold on to them so closely. We learn our weaknesses by clinging to what gives us the strength to fight. Surely Naruto has taught you that much."
The problem, Hanabi informs her starlight cat, is that they live in a house of paper and decorum, and well, some of them can see through that. Some of them can read lips from the other end of the building, when they try hard enough, see the skin under someone's jaw pulse in time with a heartbeat, see a hundred 'tells' that betray what one's face can't. Hanabi has watched her sister enough to know every last little tic. And it's bad enough that their father wants her to marry Uchiha Sasuke, and it's worse that the last Uchiha would probably okay with that. But what's really not sitting well is the fact that Hinata herself probably wouldn't mind right now, because being trapped in this house has obviously driven her stark raving batty.
He hands Neji a letter to deliver to his masters, outlining in black and parchment his price. Neji scans it quickly, in front of him, and narrows his eyes, veins still swollen with energy. They reflect nothing but the morning sun, and the Hyuuga genius takes the scroll and his leave.
It's Hinata that returns the scroll to him hours later, eyes firmly fixed on the ground, cheeks pink with flattered scandal. Either she peeked too, or her family let her look at the price tag they are putting on her. He unrolls it to find stipulations added, but none of his are touched. He grabs her wrist and demands to be taken to her family.
In front of all these soul piercing eyes he signs his blood and waits for her and her father to do the same.
It is too finished. I just don't like playing the rating game on this site. If I have to tell you how this all works, you're not old enough to be reading smut.
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