THE CREATION
.:chapter one:.

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It wasn't the fact that he was good-looking. It wasn't his aristocratic nose, or his perfect jaw line, or the faint little smirk that graced his lips. No, that wasn't what had caught her eye first.

Rather, it was the frame, his frame — no, its frame — that made her decide to purchase the painting. (He was just an added bonus, the cherry on top.) It was a lovely golden-brown color, the one of polished bronze, and the woodcarvings were simply exquisite. She had been looking for a long time for a frame for this one oil-painting the she had — it was a bowl of fruit, if her memory served her — and it seemed that her search was finally over.

She paid the man at the counter of the antique store with a fistful of fives and some quarters — fifteen seventy-five, to be exact — and convinced him to help her load the painting into the truck of her sedan for another fifty cents. As she started the engine, she thought she heard a whisper but brushed it off; it was probably just the car.

As she turned onto the highway, her cell phone rang and she hesitated for half a second — she was fairly certain talking on the phone while driving was illegal — before answering it.

"Hey, Tenten, listen, I think I found a really nice frame for your painting. It's mahogany and made by some French guy whose name I won't even try to pronounce but it's really pretty and I think you'll like it a lot and—"

Tenten let Ino ramble for a moment before interrupting.

"Actually, I already found a frame."

"Really? Ah, you bitch. I wasted my gas money on you."

Tenten quickly dropped her phone onto her lap as she drove past a hidden police car; she wasn't taking her chances. After one quick glance over her shoulder to assure herself that the it wasn't following her, she held the phone back up to her ear. "No, but it's perfect. Really. Lee's going to be thrilled that his fruit bowl will be surrounded by such a high-class frame."

"Well, this frame here looks high-class, too. How much did you pay for it?"

"Fifteen seventy-five — wait, no," she quickly did the calculations in her head, "sixteen twenty-five."

"Ha." Ino sounded way too smug for her less-than-stellar achievement. "The frame I found is only sixteen dollars."

Tenten took her exit and slowed down in front of a red-light, sharing a quick glance with the driver in the car to her left. He was pretty cute. It was a pity that they were in different cars. "Ino, I'm not that much of a penny pincher. A quarter makes no difference to me."

There was a slight pause. "Well, I'm going to come over to see the frame then."

"Yeah, whatever," Tenten pulled into her driveway, accustomed to Ino's blunt ways, "and bring Lee with you. I think he'll be really pleased with it."

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"Dude, he's kind of hot."

Tenten glanced at Ino, one eyebrow raised. "He's a painting."

"He's hot," she repeated matter-of-factly, moving to stand closer to the painting. "It's too bad he's not real. "

Lee looked back and forth between his now-framed painting, hanging on Tenten's kitchen wall, and the one that currently had Ino infatuated. "Do you know who the artist is? I've never seen this painting before."

Tenten shrugged and had the sudden urge to drag Ino away from her painting — she was, admittedly, feeling protective of the guy in the painting because she had found him after all. "Probably some obscure painter. This is an original, isn't it?"

"Yes, yes, of course. You can see the paint," Lee answered with a well-trained eye. "It was beautifully painted, I must admit—so realistic. I must admit my jealousy."

Tenten sipped from her glass of cold water and came to stand by Ino, who was ignoring Lee's framed painting and staring instead at the picture of the man. "It's that good, huh? I guess throwing it away would be an insult to the artist then."

"At the very least," gasped Lee, dramatically placing a hand over his heart. "What you speak of would be an egregious crime against the very arts themselves! Surely you weren't actually thinking of doing such a thing."

"No, no, of course not," Tenten lied carelessly. "Of course I'll keep him." She really had no intention of doing such a thing but she knew that Lee would have a fit if she said that aloud and she had experienced too many of Lee's fits to be in the mood to brave another one. "I guess…I'll need another frame then."

Ino brightened considerably. "I have just the one."

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She woke up in the middle of the night, certain that she had heard a noise coming from her living room. Her heart beating rapidly—she really wasn't cut out for this sort of thing—she grasped the baseball bat she always kept by her nightstand with trembling hands and slowly opened her bedroom door.

"Hello?" she called out instinctively but mentally slapped herself. Whoever was out there was probably a thief or a murderer and wouldn't respond. If anything, she had made herself an easy target. Why, oh, why had she decided to live alone? She should have gotten a dog at least. Something big and scary, like a German shepherd. If only her landlord allowed pets.

With footsteps that she hoped her quiet, she made her way down the hallway and into the living room where—holy shit—she did see a shadowy figure. Very near to a nervous breakdown, Tenten tried to think of some excuse for the shape. Did she have a coat rack there? Maybe a new house plant? But as the figure very obviously moved, she raised her bat.

This was it. Swing and don't miss. Take him out. Knock him out. You can do this, Ten. You're ready for this. You were born ready.

The figure—thief, murderer, vagabond, whatever it was—seemed to sense that he was no longer alone in the room and very quickly made for the door. In a fit of newfound courage and rage—he wasn't getting away that easily—Tenten charged, brandishing her baseball bat like a blade of fire, but was stopped dead in her tracks as the lights flicked on.

Unable to move, she blinked rather stupidly at what could only be her incredibly hot painted man come to life.

Oh, shit.

a/n: No idea where I'm going with this but hey, it'll be a fun ride.

Review!

~seradine