Title: Improper
Characters/Pairings: Neji/Hinata, primarily. Tenten, Ino, and Sakura feature pretty prominently. Very peripheral Naruto/Sasuke, because it's fun.
Rating: M. Rating has been upped for some more sexiness. I think.
Notes: This was written as a poor excuse to make Neji say "fuck" if only because Colin Firth is just so sexy when he says at he end of Bridget Jones' Diary, because noble and dignified men who spit dirty words out are sexy. I had been playing around with the idea of making Minato do the cursing and Kushina going weak at the knees, but I couldn't resist making Neji spit it out instead. Also, drunkandranting!Sakura was probably the most fun thing I have written ever. Possible OOcness, but the characters have aged a bit and there is alcohol involved, so I'm going to pretend it's justified. (Also, I lovelovelove shopping for underwear, especially at Vicky's Secret. Best. Store. Ever. No joke! Every woman ever should have at least one bra and one panty from that store, it's that amazing.) In any case, this is mindless as writing gets, but the main characters in my novel were driving me nuts and I hate my male lead, so this was a fun break. Anyway, please read, enjoy, and remember to review!

Hinata was eighteen, squeamish, and clad in nothing but a black minidress, red satin pumps and the shreds of her dignity.

I can't do this. Small, quick breaths puffed out of her mouth, bordering on hyperventilation. It hadn't looked that bad in the store, she thought frantically. And truly, it really wasn't all that bad—sure, the skirt fell a good three feet above what she felt was a reasonable length, and the neckline scooped somewhere far, far below anything Hinata had ever worn before, but compared to some of the other things Ino had whipped off of the racks in the store—

Well, once Ino and Sakura had started blathering on about strapless bras and off-shoulder minis, Hinata had drawn the line. A strapless bra, on her of all people! She spared her breasts, poor monsters though they were, a mournful look.

"What, are your bras industrial strength or something?" Ino had asked jokingly, combing through a rack of dressed that looked more like swimwear.

Hinata squeaked an answer that sounded something like 'meep' and 'yes', eyeing a dress that Ino had picked out—a golden metallic monstrosity made more out of strips of leather and rhinestones than fabric—with dread pooling in her stomach.

Sakura looked at her quizzically. "You're not even that big, Hinata-chan. Well, you're bigger than—"

"You?" Ino swept in, shoving an armload of clothes at Sakura, who immediately disappeared, sputtering, under the deluge. "We know, Forehead, you have the bodily proportions of a twelve-year-old, we know. Let me see, Hinata-chan," she said, hands already unzipping her jacket.

"Here?" Hinata squeaked. There were out in the middle of the store!

Ino rolled her eyes. "Just the straps and the—oh God, Hinata-chan, did you actually get measured when you got this?" She stared at the off-white plain too-tight bra. She had tugged the shoulder of Hinata's flak jacket and shirt down to reveal the strap and the cup of the offending undergarment.

Hinata thought she might die of embarrassment, but forced out, "M-my mom took me t-to buy it."

Sakura, who had managed to deposit the clothes on an empty bench, came over to have a look. "Do that again, Ino-pig, and I'll give you a haircut that you'll never, ever forget." She too peered at Hinata's bra, and said, "Hinata-chan, you do realize that your bra isn't supposed to be smaller than your actual boobs, right? Look, you're spilling over the cup."

Hinata wondered how she could explain that whenever she entered the lingerie department, she turned so red and her heart beat so fast and embarrassment pooled in her every cell, and all she could do was grab the plainest bra in sight that was the same size as the ones she had at home and run for the hills before her skin melted right off her face.

"Not to mention," Ino said, wrinkling her nose delicately, "it's ugly. Forget dresses, we're getting you a whole new set of underwear first."

So then the pair had dragged her to a specialty store, a foreign chain called Victoria's Secret, and they had, indeed, gotten her a whole new set of underwear—everything from the heavy cotton-and-chain mesh bra-and-panty sets for missions, and—Hinata's face turned red just thinking about them—delicate, lacy flimsy things for every-day wear. They had even badgered her into buying a thong, which gave her a wedgie, but Ino absolutely swore that she needed to have. They had even coerced her into wearing the darn thing tonight, insisting that the black satin dress they had picked out for her was too clingy to wear a normal panty with, because it would give her panty-lines.

Well, she had to admit that the bra was pretty—all smoky lavender and black sheer lace—and it was a push-up. Hinata couldn't quite believe that those proud, well-formed breasts where hers, but the bra had done wonders.

Which brought her right back to the beginning of the circle—she really couldn't do this. She looked—looked like a peacock, ready to be lampooned, in her flashy dress and flashy shoes and flashy make-up and flashy underwear. She wanted her old flak jacket, with its comfortingly large folds and bulky material; or better, yet, she could climb under her blankets and never emerge again.

But just as she had made her decision, Tenten walked in.

"Hey there," she winked, shedding her coat to reveal a fashionably short white dress with a high collar. She surveyed Hinata with a smile dancing across her lips. "Ino and Saura weren't kidding when they said that that dress looked amazing on you."

"Tenten-san," Hinata said, confused, "what are you doing here?"

"Oh, me? I wasn't able to make the shopping date, right? So the other two sent me here to make sure that you wouldn't bail out on us tonight. You weren't going to, were you?" Ten-ten raised a rather accusing eyebrow.

Hinata blushed harder and stared at her shoes. "It's just—well, I-I've never dressed this way before and it's tight and clingy—" and I'm big and lumbering and clumsy and my breasts are too big and I have freaky eyes—

Tenten rolled her eyes. "Hinata, you look great. Better than great."

"But—"

"No buts," Tenten interrupted, looking through Hinata's closet. "Jeez, Hinata-chan, don't you have any nice—aha!" She whipped out an old brown leather jacket that Hinata had never found a chance to wear. "Put this on, it's a bit chilly out there—"

"Tenten? What are you doing?"

Hinata froze.

Neji loomed in her doorway, his expression caught somewhere between flabbergasted and mildly confused. His blank eyes landed on Hinata and jolted up and down her body in a quick perusal before he glowered at Tenten. Hinata wanted to wrap herself up in yards and yards of linen and sleep underground for a million years.

"And where—just where do you think you're taking Hinata-sama?"

Tenten frowned. "I'm not taking her anywhere, Neji. It's a girls' night out for Ino's birthday and we're all going clubbing at Le Chat Noir."

"Clubbing?" Neji repeated, trying to get his straight-an-arrow mindset around the word. "Clubbing?" He cleared his throat. "I cannot agree to this. Hinata-sama is the Hyuuga heir and as such she must maintain a certain threshold of decorum at all times, and I am afraid that clothing herself in such a manner is not at all—"

Hinata felt something in her chest coil with tension, as she remembered countless afternoons when they would train together and he would look directly into her eyes with his razor-white ones and they would speak and it would not be weighted by useless decorum and mannerisms, and suddenly, they were more than convenient pawns on her father's chessboard. Where had that honestly gone? I'm right here, Neji-nii-san. The least you could do is talk to me.

"I'm going, Neji-nii-san," she said clearly, her spine straightening and her hands stilling at her sides. "I've already made the decision and I have spoken to father about it. If you still have objections, please speak directly to him."

Neji, whose eyes had carefully been avoiding hers, asked crisply, "And did you inform him that you would dress in that manner?"

Hinata's fingers twitched, but she did not bungle her words nor did she look at the floor. "He did not ask for the particulars, and I was not inclined to inform him. We are late, Neji-nii-san."

Tenten, who was smirking, glanced at her watch and declared that they were getting late indeed, and could Neji step aside for just a second so they could get through?

Neji stared after his teammate and his cousin with narrowed eyes.

What the hell was Hinata thinking, going out clubbing—of all things!—looking like—like—

Neji's prodigious brain ground to a halt, finally allowing him to examine the image Hinata had left burned on his retinas in its entirety. He examined, and then he gulped, wondering why his mouth had suddenly gone bone dry. The fact that other men—other malicious, disgusting men with overactive libidos who did not know to lower their gazes out of decorum, out of respect, damn it!—would be staring at her the way he had wanted to do, that they would touch her and—and dance with her…

Neji knew what passed for dancing in clubs. His lip curled. It was sex with clothes.

A picture of Hinata, head thrown back, straps askew, gyrating with an unknown man pawing at her, clawed at his insides.

He rapidly came to a decision and strode down the hallway with purpose.

"Hey!" Ino shouted over the music, sipping a drink that was violently orange and had a tropical umbrella sticking out of it. "You made it!"

"Almost didn't," Tenten grinned back, smoothly sliding into the seat next to Ino at the bar. "Neji pulled a 'you-are-Hyuuga-heiress' on Hinata-chan, the jerk."

"Hey, he's your teammate," Sakura said, trying to fish the cherry out of the bottom of her drink.

"And I'll never make excuses for him," Tenten replied. "Neji will forever have a giant stick stuck up his backside, I swear." She grinned wickedly. "You should have heard Hinata-chan take him down a notch, it was amazing!"

Hinata blushed even redder as she slid into the seat next to Tenten. "It was n-nothing," she stammered, trying to refrain from pulling down her skirt as it rode up on her thighs.

"Good for you, Hinata," Ino said, lounging in a way that made her seem boneless and alert at the same time, "but you know what's not nothing?" She smiled, slow and sensuous, at a man eyeing her legs appreciatively across the dance floor. "Well, I'm off. Cheer up, Forehead, it's not like they got together yesterday," she said, sliding out of her seat and sauntering into the throng of dancers. "Get really drunk and really laid, it'll do you a world of good."

"Someone's on tonight," Sakura snorted into her drink after Ino had disappeared.

Tenten and Hinata shared a glance, each wondering whether or not to risk asking her what was wrong. An unhappy Sakura was usually an unpredictable Sakura, a phenomenon no one save Naruto and Ino quite knew how to handle.

"S-Sakura-san," Hinata began when Tenten had made it clear that she was keeping her peace, "what's wrong?"

"I don't nearly have enough alcohol in my system, that's what," Sakura said unhappily, "Years of my life I throw away for that man, years and years! You know what I could have been doing instead? I could have been dating, I could have been having fun, I could have been having really great sex! I could have been living and loving my life!" She paused long enough to take a long swig of alcohol before continuing, "But you know what I've been doing instead? Training! Training day in and day out, hoping that one day, he would come back and take a good long look at me and just—just—gah!"

Hinata reached across Tenten and patted Sakura's arm.

"But you know what he does? The only action that Sasuke's interested in seeing is in Naruto's pants! What about my pants? And—and—you know what really, really bugs me?" Sakura seemed to be working herself up into a genuine rage, brought on, seemingly, by too little sex, too much work, and enough alcohol to drown a small village. "Really, really bugs me? They're not even gay! Not in a real sense! At least, Naruto isn't—no one who pays that much attention to women is gay, and Sasuke was supposed to be asexual! They're both just emotionally deformed and only capable of forming emotional attachments with each other! So where does that leave me, huh? Where?" She wiped at a runny eyes with an impatient hand. "You know what? Ino-pig's right. Don't you two dare ever tell her that, but she's right. I'm pretty, I'm damn smart, and two of my roommates are currently having mind-blowing sex all the time, but that doesn't matter! I am going to have a great time and I am going to get laid tonight, just watch me." She viciously slapped some bills down on the counter, adjusted her bra, and stumbled into the crowd.

Tenten and Hinata stared after her for a few seconds, each not knowing quite what to make of Sakura's tirade until Tenten let out a low whistle.

"Wow," she said, "didn't know that Naruto and Sasuke's hook-up bothered her so much."

"We would be fools to think that it wouldn't bother her at all," Hinata intoned. She thought of Shino and Kiba, and then of them together. She shuddered and vowed never to think of such blasphemous things again.

Tenten rolled her eyes. "You seem to getting on just fine," she pointed out, "and you had a crush on Naruto for years."

Hinata smiled. "Well, I knew always that I couldn't compete with Sasuke-kun in Naruto-kun's heart. And besides, it was never about that." It really wasn't: her attraction to Naruto had been easy, mostly because he had never shown any signs of ever reciprocating. It may have broken her heart when she was fifteen, but that was a long time ago and the record had long been set straight. Besides which, Naruto had been wonderful to look up to, to draw inspiration from, but she could never imagine doing normal things with him, like having tea at a small pastry shop filled with the fragrance of cinnamon rolls, or strolling along Konoha proper hand-in-hand, or watching old and gray movies with him into the night. Naruto was fun, Naruto was brave, Naruto was the face and force of a revolution, and she had loved him for all of that, but she couldn't picture setting out with him.

And so she had done a very un-Hinata-like thing: she had cut her losses and moved on. So when Naruto and Sasuke finally, finally, finally got together, she could honestly smile and wish them good luck with only a small twinge of regret that was easy to ignore.

"Right," Tenten said, ordering a margarita for herself and one for Hinata as well. "No wonder Ino ran off before Sakura got going. Drink up. The night is only just beginning."

"Surely," Hinata said, coloring, "you don't mean…dancing. Not like that, at least." She sipped her drink, getting used to the tangy flavor before taking another.

"Of course I do. What did you think people do at clubs?" Tenten licked the rim of her glass. "That's your problem, Hinata-chan, you don't go out there and grab what you want. Tonight's all about losing your inhibitions, remember?"

"N-no," Hinata said, "it's about celebrating I-Ino-san's birthday."

"And she's off celebrating," Tenten said. "Get out there and dance!"

"But—but I haven't got anyone to dance with!" Hinata argued, grasping at straws. When Ino had suggesting clubbing together, Hinata had thought that she meant going to get drinks and laughing and good conversation and good music, but this…

Tenten winked, and spun Hinata's stool around with one jab of her elegantly shod heel. Hinata gasped as she came face-to-face with a rather tallish man with cropped brown hair. Tenten draped herself across her shoulders and drawled, "This gentleman has been eying you since we got here. Why don't you treat him to a dance?"

Hinata tried to say, No, thank you, I'm not sure I know how to dance. Instead, she spun around, gulped back what was left of her margarita and slipped off her stool.

Shedding inhibitions, right? Hinata was shy, she was stand-off-ish, she liked baking and gardening more than killing and stealing about on missions, but she also had Neji's disapproving stare glaring away in the back of her mind, reducing her once again to a shadow of the title of Hyuuha heir. She was more than that--she was flesh and blood and bone, and she would act like it, not like an idea or a ghost in Hyuuga skin. Coming here was her decision, after all. And she had on a thong, a new bra, and a slinky black dress—she was sexy. The way the man's gaze slithered up her body confirmed that, and although his stare did make her feel a bit queasy and a bit cheap, well, it only was for tonight. Tonight, she wouldn't be Hinata, trapped in the elegant confines of the Hyuuga estate, with a life governed by laws and mandates that held her in a vice-like grip. No, tonight, she would be free, free and—and improper.

Absolutely inappropriate and completely improper, with her tiny panties and tiny dress.

She smiled at the man, who smiled back. He held out a hand, which she gladly took and whirled onto the dance floor. Immediately, the crush of bodies pressed against her and the energy pumped into her, through the soles of her shoes and the heat of the vibrating air. The dancers moved like an alien body, driven by eroticism and wanton enjoyment.

And dancing. Well. It wasn't so hard. Not really. Just move an arm this way, move the shoulders this way, rotate the hips. Her limbs moved more and more fluidly as the tempo of the music sped up. The beat ricocheted through her, dictating the movement of her body and the toss of her hair. The alcohol, she realized. The alcohol was lubricating her joints, making the slide of body on body that much easier, and made even easier because she wasn't Hinata right now: she was nameless, some wanton slip of a girl, a woman, really, on this dance floor. At this moment, there existed nothing aside from the movement, the live heat, the thrum and stroke of music though her body.

Her partner stepped away from her suddenly, but returned and spun her around. He placed his hands on her hips firmly; they were large and alien, radiating heat that she felt searing into her skin. She gasped, surprised, but moved, experimentally, and found even more ease of movement here. She gyrated her body to the music as she saw other women doing, moved her arms over her head, through her hair, down through the valley of her breasts. The man's hands pulled her closer to him, moving her hips to an ever faster beat, ghosting up and down her sides, barely touching. Hinata felt pieces of her come apart and come together, pulsating in time to the rhythm, forming the beginning of arousal.

The utter freedom of movement was heady. Hinata moved more sensuously, more sinuously, reveling in the wantonness and lust coursing through her. The man's hands moved more boldly, languidly gliding across the satin of her dress to her breasts. She arched her back, pressing her ass against his groin, closer than she ever had before as his hands pressed her breasts, thumbed her hard nipples, ground his hips flush against hers and moved--moved his hands, his fingers, his hips in an ancient, holy rhythm that was at once unholy, in a crude imitation of sex. The area between her legs pulsated with frenetic energy, at once more alive and emptier and wetter than it had ever felt, and she wanted him there, wanted this nameless, faceless stranger to pleasure her with more ferocity than she had ever wanted anything else. She pressed herself flush against him, threw her hands back to meet the back of his head. Her fingers tangled in his hair as he leaned forward to breathe into the juncture of her neck and shoulder. Her skin jumped, and she gasped and she wrapped her hands further in his hair—

His long hair.

And the last she remembered, her partner had short, cropped hair. She froze, heart galloping for all the wrong reasons, and spun around.

Only to come face-to-face with Neji.

Neji met Hinata's shocked gaze a little less than evenly, and called himself every blasphemous thing he could think of. He even made some up, just to make the point.

He had failed at his mission, more miserably than he had failed any mission in his life. The parameters had been so simple, too: to get in, get Hinata-sama, get out, and give her the most blistering lecture that she would ever be given in her life. It had started out perfectly: a few well-placed phone calls had gotten him the address of the club; he had dressed in simple civilian clothes so he could slip in unnoticed; and the oaf that had been dancing with Hinata had been a civilian, and thus easy enough to dispose of. He had even brought along sensible shoes so she could walk home with him while he delivered the lecture.

What he had forgotten to factor in was Hinata herself; or perhaps, more accurately, his reaction to her. Once he had taken care of The Oaf, it would have been simple to take her wrist and drag her out.

Instead, his traitorous eyes had swept over the supple outline of her breasts, the slope of her hips, the delicate angling of her collarbones and how her hair caught the light as she moved her shoulders; and his traitorous hands had wanted, more than they had ever wanted anything before, more than they had thirsted for the secrets of the Jyuuken and the Kaiten, they had thirsted for her. They placed themselves, of their own accord, on her hips, molding themselves to her, and his legs had moved in time to the music (which left him mildly bewildered; when had he, of all people, grown a sense of rhythm?) and he felt Hinata move and then he was lost, lost in the wanton motions of her body.

Until her felt her go utterly, utterly still and spin around. Her confused eyes slammed into his, thin, aristocratic brows knotting and pink, moistened lips parting with questions. The straps of her dress had slipped off her shoulders, her hair flew in a cloud of black around her face, and her cheeks were redder than her had ever seen them.

He knew Hinata, better than even her teammates knew her; he knew the extent of her Byakugan and how thin her chakra could be stretched before she broke and that she still had trouble with certain high-level kata and that her left side was slightly more vulnerable than her right. He knew her shoulders and he knew her palms and her knew her calves, knew them because he had guided their movements, perfected their arches and taught them how to land blows, swiftly and surely. He knew them like he knew abstract paintings, or the landscape encased by fog.

And now, here in the dim lighting of the nightclub, the fog blew away and he saw her face, beloved as it was, as dear to him as it was, emerge, and he was filled with the inexplicable urge to know every expression it could ever have.

And then, right then, all the pieces of the puzzle came hurtling together.

Hinata stared as a muscle jumped in Neji's jaw, as shadows flitted across his eyes. Questions clamored in her mind. What are you doing here? She wanted to ask. Why were you dancing with me? Why were you touching me?

But all of those ground to a skidding halt, when Neji hung his head, and ground out, his voice harsh and guttural, "Fuck."

And Hinata felt her knees suddenly grow very, very weak. Dimly, she wondered if she had ever heard anything short of perfectly proper ever leave her cousin's mouth. No, he had never, ever said anything like that before.

And she found it, strangely, curiously sexy. And it had been him the entire time, with the touching, the teasing, and the fireworks setting off below her skin. And he had done it…because he had wanted to.

There was nothing tying him to her, no yoke of Hyuuga decorum or duty that made him put his hands on her waist and move them together as though they were one body. Nothing made him touch her and spread fire wherever he stroked. He ha done that of his own accord, and he had done that to Hinata, not just the embodiment of Hyuuga continuity.

Which only meant that he found her…desirable. A strange, pleasant bubbly feeling, starting from the pit of her abdomen spread through her body, and that feeling made her take his face in her hands and bring their lips together. It was a tentative, heady contact, one that left him still as a statue.

When he didn't move, the heady euphoria ebbed. Maybe she had read the situation wrong? Embarrassment washed over her, and she moved away, ready to start babbling apologies or—

But suddenly, Neji, his eyes brighter and sharper than she had ever seen and his jaw more set than she had ever known it could be, wrapped his hands around her waist and held her to him. His gaze bored deep into her own as he moved one of his hands up her back and the other settled around her neck; and his mouth, softly, tentatively moved back against her own. His lips were slightly chapped, but he drank at her mouth, softly supplicating, beseeching, returning again and again for more. She melted into him, brushing her lips against his. Somewhere along the line, her mouth opened and their tongues danced.

And then, hours or seconds or years later, when they resurfaced to breathe, Hinata decided that she had quite enough of dancing for one night. She tugged on his hand and pulled him out of the crowd.

They needed to find someplace quiet, someplace without the heat of sex shimmering in the air and the deafening waves of music.

They would need to talk. They would need to sort out the entanglements that had sprung up between them, had long been in waiting, if she were honest with herself. The air was thick with so many possibilities, and his hand was very large and square in hers.

Or maybe, Hinata thought with a smile, they could just kiss some more and leave the talking for some other night.