It was a mild Saturday evening. The day had been filled with the sound of tape being wrapped around boxes and "Do you want this?"-questions. The fruit of their labor lay stacked around them. In the center on the fluffy, elaborate rug Tenten had picked out, the two of them sat. He with his legs traditionally folded underneath him, she with hers casually crossed. He was having a glass of scotch, she was enjoying a full-bodied red.

"I think I should get it", she was saying. Her hair was not quite sweaty but it did not have that fluffy dryness it took on after she blow-dried it too long. It was somewhere in between and matched the color of her eyes as they sparkled with teasing.

He did not reply, but his firm grip on the Louis XIII de Remy Martin Black Pearl Grande Champagne Cognac Brandy imported from France made it clear he would need more arguments from her. Carefully but without leaving any doubt about her resolution, she placed her strong tanned fingers below his.

"You are not an easy person to live with." Her gaze was as steady as a long-term alcoholic's.

The twist of his head indicated he was not unswayable. It was an undeniable argument. Still, his hands would not release the bottle neck. He could not let it go.

As she shifted her weight to hold onto what both of them wanted, she bumped into one of the boxes marked "Weapons, Tenten". The thought of how he would never see this box or its contents displayed in their bedroom again scraped the inside of his mind as it slowly flowed into memories of their past. With their fingers only millimeters apart the sensation of a shared past intensified.

The sun was shining onto their heads as concentration grew more difficult. The large clearing in the middle of the woods surrounding all their home, the village of Konoha, should have provided ample room for both training groups. Sitting by the edge of it, almost blanketed by shadows sat sixteen-year old Neji, eyes closed, back straight. While Tenten, his training partner, hovered hidden in the leaves above him, he was supposed to use his sight to locate her. But his eyes stayed shut due to his increasing annoyance with Lee's newest training partner. Formerly, Lee, Tenten and Neji had been a well-oiled if counterintuitive team of three. Both Tenten and Neji had gotten used to Lee's antics: He favored a green jumpsuit and energetic battle cries. But his most recent endeavor was beyond their understanding. A young woman from the village, which Lee obviously had a crush on, had asked for training. She was very vocal.

The effort it took to concentrate on learning a complicated technique was heavily inconvenienced by the newcomer's frequent shouts of "Ouch!", "Not so hard!", and "How'd you do that?!" After Neji had failed to locate Tenten by the time thirty minutes had passed, she elegantly swung herself off the branch, hanging by one hand for a second, then dropping to her feet. Heavy weaponry rattled as she walked over and knelt next to him. They shared an exasperated sigh, silently agreed to choose a different training time in the future.

There was nothing much else to do but watch the other two in their efforts to train. Sakura was a rather pretty girl, only a year younger than them, and her quest to improve her fighting skills would have been very commendable if it had not been for the sake of a boy. Not a man. Not great love. A boy she liked from school. It almost seemed too straight-forward to be true.

Tenten did have to admit that Sasuke, the object of Sakura's affection, was very dreamy. Lilly-white skin offset with deep, dark, heavily lashed eyes. Neji could not have cared if Sasuke's kiss could cure cancer. He would never understand people's fascination with their feelings. Tenten wondered whether she should try and explain but one look at her sparing partner's impassive face as he watched the vision of Sakura with her light hair and ebony skin perform acrobatic-like moves less than three meters away gave her an inkling of the undertaking's furtiveness.

What she eventually settled with was: "Some people actually like feeling things."

He shrugged and Tenten rolled her eyes. But she did it with a smile.

When Lee finally released the girl from his overenthusiastic claws, she got up from her chaffed knees, panting heavily and made her way over to Tenten, who was holding out a bottle of water for her.

"It gets easier," Tenten promised, who was partly talking about the hard training and partly about Lee's demeanor. He was doing lunges and laughing about life or youth or something in the background.

Neji made no such comment.

Grateful, Sakura accepted the beverage and took a few long gulps before she replied.

"In any case, it will be worth it," she assured them. As she sat down, Sakura brushed her beautiful hair out of her face and inadvertently smeared dirt all over it. Tenten contemplated telling her, but decided not to would be more fun.

"So, Sakura…," Tenten began. She was leaning back on her elbows, legs outstretched and enjoying the last rays of sunshine. "How can you be so sure it'll be worth it?"

Sakura smiled. Her eyes shone with delight. She got to talk about her sweetheart. Tenten wondered what it would feel like to be in love.

"Some people are worth fighting for."

It was a good answer, Tenten decided.

Her reply was: "You got some…" She made an all-encompassing gesture of her face. When Sakura was finished cleaning herself with a rag Tenten handed her, the latter continued to question her:

"What makes him so special?"

She was expecting a detailed description of his physical characteristics, but was surprised to hear: "He's a friend. And he's … in a bad way. Everyone deserves happiness. Some just need a little help getting it." Her tone was soft but there was a hardness that forecast her determination.

"So, you're going to punch it into him?" Tenten chuckled as she imagined Sakura pummeling the former heartthrob until he smiled.

"Something like that. Haven't you ever felt that way about anyone?" Sakura had assumed Tenten would be more experienced in matters of the heart seeing as she was an entire year older, but the elder just laughed loudly. Shaking out her brown hair, she did not seem offended but honestly amused.

"No, all my time is spent with this guy!" She gave Neji a soft kick in the leg. His attention was turned towards them for the first time. He did not seem particularly interested, still.

Sakura sighed and her gaze became blurred. She was clearly remembering better times. "I fell in love with Sasuke while training," she confessed woefully. "It just couldn't be helped."

"He seems like a pretty tough guy to love." Tenten gave the lovesick girl her most compassionate smile. She got the impression Sakura was not as air-headed as previously assumed. The latter nodded with the same sad smile still lingering. Tenten was overcome with the sensation to cheer her up.

"In fact, I'd rather fall in love with this ice block over here than the boiling pot of barely suppressed rage, which went off to join a ragtag band of criminals."

Sakura chuckled and for a split second Tenten felt content about making someone else feel better. That was until she caught Neji's look. It was one she had never observed before and that in itself was uncanny. Her silent partner only had a limited amount of facial expressions, so in the last years she had gotten to know all of them very well. Seeing an unfamiliar one scared her to the core. Simultaneously the experience seemed so surreal that afterwards, she could not be sure it had actually occurred. Shifting her gaze away from Neji's now averted face, Tenten slowly became aware of Lee's laughter drawing closer. He was slapping his thigh and everything.

"Can you imagine!" he shrieked, then made kissy noises aimed at the only other guy in the vicinity. Neji was not amused. Tenten joined in the merriment with awkward laughter. After Neji had thrown a rock at the gasping-for-air Lee, the atmosphere returned to normal for Tenten. This was familiar territory. - It was time to play the diplomat between those two, opposite poles that they were.

After some impressive displays of Neji's knowledge of chakra flows and Lee's physical capabilities, the two were talked down by Tenten and agreed to call it a day. Sakura's honest compliment of Lee's thai-jutsus prompted him to walk her home, a misguided attempt to place himself in her heart, or pants, or both. Tenten felt sure he was wasting his time, but she knew him as well as she did Neji. One thing was for certain, Lee would pursue his passion until he or it died. It was a hopeless cause. Therefore, Tenten let the two of them walk off in the direction of Sakura's home. The girl was politely listening to a story of his about something amazing that he did.

"You wanna meet at dawn tomorrow to avoid those two?" Tenten asked when they were out of earshot, and shouldered her weaponry bag. Neji nodded. Before they parted ways, he asked her something:

"Did you mean it?" His voice always had a sultry, deep sound to it. It was a pity he never said anything nice with it.

"Hell yeah. They're super annoying."

"That you'd rather fall in love with the ice block."

"Oh."

"That is me, correct?"

Stopped dead in her tracks, the same feeling as before overcame her. A mixture of genuine fear and surrealism.

"No!," she spat out. He frowned.

"I mean, yes," she corrected herself. Realizing that she was acting strange, Tenten found her composure, smiled and replied with a calmness she did not feel: "What I meant was yes, you are the referred to ice block."

"Who you would rather fall in love with."

The sentence hung in the air between them for the duration of their shared breath. Then Tenten exhaled and scoffed: "No, of course not."

The sun set before either of them could arrive home.