Written for the NejiTen LJ community's challenge, FOIL. (First, Outer, Inner, Last)
- Spinning -
- By Ariel32 -
-
(Theme: Outer)
She goes to the Hyuuga compound for the first time when she is fifteen.
It's not actually her first time. It's not even her second. She's snuck in a total of six times, ever since she was a Genin and Lee double-dared her to do it. (After that it became a sort of tradition. She sneaks in twice each year; once on her birthday, once on Neji's. She's never ever been caught.)
But this time she's been invited, on formal invitation – an invitation issued, word for word, by Neji, with Hiashi's stamp of approval, complete with a feast and dancing and music. And silk kimonos.
(Formal, she learns, is really formal for Hyuugas. Not like her version of formal, which more or less involves putting on another shirt and a clean pair of pants. And maybe retying her hair because after three hours of training, it tends to come out a little.
Formal comes in white kimonos and silk and hair ornaments carved of dark wood. It comes in rows of long tables laden with food, carefully arranged in patterns so painstaking that Tenten almost feels the food is more for decoration than for eating. It comes in red bobbing lanterns strung on lines that crisscross overhead, and banners with elegant symbols painted in black ink, and the soft scattering of notes coming from a lute.
Formal, she learns, is worlds away from her.)
"What do you think?" Tenten can't help asking when she arrives at the gates of the compound. She smoothes her hands over the fabric of her new kimono, the shade of roses.
Neji is wearing all white today. His hair is pulled back loosely, leaving strands to settle around his face, all black and white elegance and silvery eyes. She takes a moment to trace the line of his shoulders, the set of his jaw. He is Neji, flawless and flawless and flawed.
"The color suits you."
She smiles at him – "That's all you can think of to say?" – but she knows. Neji and words have always had a tentative relationship. She can't see into him like he can see into her, but she knows him well enough to read his words.
(They could find each other with their eyes closed, she thinks, though that defies the point of Neji's eyes at all. Neji's eyes are meant to see, so that he doesn't have to look. But – figures of speech – they could find each other with their eyes closed – in a storm or under a clear sky or anywhere else at all. They know each other too well.)
She looks up at the stars overhead when she enters the compound, almost dim in comparison to the arching glow of the lanterns. It's like tonight this place is a world away from everything else, and tonight, the stars can only look in from outside.
Tonight Tenten is outside of her own world, her own small world, where the stars are friends and take-out dinners are standard and cheap paper fans are as common as mosquitoes on a summer night. Tonight she is in Neji's world. If Tenten comes from wooden houses with slanted roofs and trees that shade the windows, Neji comes from walls of white and wide hallways and silence polished smooth.
But they find each other somehow, they always do – in that twilight time when the moon is out and the sun is sinking and everything is suspended in violet and pink and blue – they find each other, on the brim of two worlds, and that is enough for them.
They tour the compound together – she's been here before, but not here – and she meets Lord Hiashi (whose gaze is sharper and older and less gentle than Neji's, but somehow doesn't pierce nearly as deep). They sit down and she scoops at rice with a pair of chopsticks and watches the tilting amber reflection in the glass surface of her cup of tea.
When the music starts and couples begin to gravitate towards the middle of the floor, she sets down her chopsticks and looks at him. "Want to dance?"
He looks up, pale eyes flickering, but she is already on her feet and starting towards the floor. "Come on," she says. He stands as well, in a sweeping motion that is somehow as uncertain as it is impressive.
"Tenten," he begins, but she is already on the floor, glancing back at him. He starts forward, hesitantly. By the time he makes it to her, the music has already begun.
"Slowpoke," she says – she puts a hand on his arm and his other hand is around her waist – and then they are dancing.
He moves stiffly at first. She dances freely, the cloth of her kimono rippling across her legs. She feels him give, little by little, the line of tension riding out his shoulders until it dissolves into nothing. His arm is at her waist and she dances – faster, faster, lighter – he moves with her, turning her, pulling her back. They are dancing and dancing and dancing and the stars are right there and everything else is gone, and the world has closed itself around them and they are the only ones left outside, the two of them and the sky.
And – who would have known? – Neji is a good dancer –
They dance until there isn't any more music, until the pale-eyed gazes of the Hyuugas have faded into the night. They dance until she can't think for the dancing, until she can no longer remember a time when she wasn't turning and turning in circles She dances closer until she feels his every movement, her body against his, faster, faster, around him and beside him and into him, and she loses herself in that gaze, white and piercing and depthless.
When they stop she is breathless. For a moment she just stands, breathing, her head still spinning. It takes a moment to register the eyes of the crowd, the violet-sharp gazes that rest on her.
She is still spinning, spinning with the stars above her, still lost in his pearly eyes, whiter than snow, brighter than moonlight. Words form at the base of her throat and in her mouth and she says them over and over in her mind until they don't make sense anymore and she doesn't remember what she was going to say.
It's not like that, she wants to say, reading the looks of the Hyuugas. I'm not – we're not –
"Tenten," Neji says, and she jerks herself back into the reality. He's watching her – she fights against the pull of those eyes, because if she looks anymore she is going to be blinded –
"Let's sit down," she says, and pulls away to stumble into the nearest chair. He follows her and stands near her while she picks up a glass and takes a whole-hearted gulp – and gasps as it burns its way down. Sake.
She empties the glass onto the ground.
"I didn't know you guys drank," she says.
"Only on special occasions."
She fills the glass with water, closing her eyes as the coolness slides down her throat. "I didn't know you danced," she hears herself say.
She cracks open an eye in time to see the corner of his mouth tilt upwards in what might have been a smile. "I don't. We're required…for special ceremonies."
"Oh." She tilts her glass so she can peer into the water, looking out through the bottom at the watery distorted ground.
"I didn't know you danced," Neji says. She can almost hear the amusement in his voice. She sits up and sends him a half-glare over the top of her glass.
"I don't," she tells him. "I'm required…for kunoichi missions."
"Hn." He watches her. She drains the rest of her glass and sighs. She's a star, shining and shining and then burning herself out. The glass clinks when she sets it back on the table.
"Do you dance for your targets like you just did?" he asks suddenly.
She thinks of how they danced, burning and fast, light and quick, moving together, a pattern of rose and pearl. "No," she says. She wonders what he was thinking – if he was thinking at all – if he was flying as fast as she was when they danced. She wonders if he came to the ground in the same dizzying spiral of speed that she did.
"Why?"
He is silent for a moment. "I wouldn't want…you to be that way. With anyone else."
She can't help it – her laughter bubbles out and escapes into the air and she pulls herself forward until her eyes are staring into his. She hasn't come back to the ground yet, Tenten realizes, she is still falling, falling so fast she doesn't even know it –
"Like this?" she says, and she moves forward. His eyes flicker again, surprise – or maybe it's something else – and he catches her hand in his and his other hand is on her shoulder – and suddenly they are kissing.
She hasn't done this before, it's her first – and – she doesn't know. His mouth opens against hers, gently at first, softly – and she didn't think her first would be so – so –
She's in heaven, she's flying, she's on earth and leaning into him and kissing him. And she's never had a moment that lasted forever, but if she ever has one, this is it –
When they break apart, he is so close to her she can see the soft darkness of his hair, the length of his eyelashes, the paleness of his skin. His hand comes up to her face, tracing the side of her face.
"Like that?" he says. This close, his voice is low and smooth and scratchy all at once. "Do you do that on your missions?"
She breathes for a moment, in and out, in and out. "Only you."
This time when his mouth curves upwards, it's a smirk. "Good," he says, and moves forward again.
---
She visits the Hyuuga compound for the first time when she is fifteen.
(It is not actually her first time. But it is her First.)