Simmering Water
Title: Simmering Water
Series: Naruto
Type: One-shot
Comments: Um... the sequel to Breathless! Since it's not good enough, it's not going on ff.net. >< God, this thing is pure crappiness, even after the several revisions. There's a spark to the beginnings of some type of twisted relationship between Sasuke and Hinata. It's terrible but I hope that you enjoy it on some level...
Disclaimer: Characters used are the creation of Kishimoto Misashi.
WARNINGS: OOCness
Simmering Water
Thinking is Overrated
By: Naito Kiseki
“Too slow,” Naruto mocked as he easily evaded Sasuke’s shurinken. A slow smirk spread itself on the blonde’s face as he caught the punch his training partner threw at him, and kicked the brunet in the abdominal area. When Sasuke was thrown back by the kick’s force, Naruto taunted, “What’s wrong with you, I haven’t seen you fight this badly since… ever. Getting tired?”
“Che, not likely,” Sasuke threw back as he stood. He disappeared only to reappear a moment later behind Naruto with a kunai in his hand. He intended to press the blade to Naruto’s neck, but the blonde ducked under Sasuke’s arms and sent a sweeping kick at his teammate. Had Sasuke not flipped, he would’ve fallen but he didn’t anticipate the shurinken that Naruto threw at him the moment he flipped. He hurriedly dashed away from the barrage of weapons.
“Honestly, what the hell is wrong with you? You’re sucking more than a beginning academy student,” Naruto commented, as he stopped his attacks and dropped on the ground in a crossed-legged position. He peered at the brunet under suspicious eyes. “You’re so distracted today. Is it a girl? Did you get laid last night or something?”
“I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.” Sasuke snapped, sending a glare at the blonde. “Get up. We’re not done yet.”
“You’re no fun when you’re distracted,” Naruto replied making no move to stand. He looked toward the vicinity of the ebon-haired boy and asked, “So was she hot? Did she scream your name in a heated moment of passion?”
“What?!” Sasuke yelped, his face as red as a baboon’s bottom. He tried to glare at Naruto but only succeeded in looking embarrassed. “No! What’s wrong with you? What possessed you to think I would sleep with a woman?!”
Naruto’s eyes widened as he scooted away from Sasuke. “I didn’t know you were like that. I can’t help in that department; I like women. You can try talking to Sakura-chan or something.”
“I’m not gay!”
“Oh, I always figured you to be type. I mean, you never show any interest in females and you just have that air about you. Are you sure you’re not just denying it?”
“You have a death wish? If so, I’ll gladly oblige to relieve you of your idiocy,” Sasuke growled holding a kunai in one hand and several shurinken in the other.
“Then what’s wrong? Break another girl’s heart? You left some poor girl crying on her doorstep after a night of hot, passionate sex didn’t you?” Naruto asked. He shook his head and was about to express his disappointment when he heard a whistle of ninja stars. He quickly dodged the attack and untangled himself, getting up into a relaxed standing position.
“What the heck?” The blonde exclaimed, scowling at the sudden attack.
“I never broke anyone’s heart. Besides, it didn’t mean anything.”
“You slept with someone?” Naruto exclaimed in disbelief. “I was joking, but okay. How was it?”
“I didn’t sleep with anyone!” Sasuke sniped.
“Oh, then what are you talking about?”
“Nothing.”
“Sasuke, you’re having an affair with someone and I want to know what.”
“I’m not having an affair. There’s nothing going on. Leave me alone.”
“Well you’re obviously feeling something about a girl. Otherwise, you wouldn’t react like this.” Naruto concluded.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“So says the strawberry-faced monkey - Hey! Stop throwing things at me!”
-:-:-
Breathing in gasps, Hinata slumped to the ground. She released the kunai from her clutches and unceremoniously dropped the blade on the dirt and gravel. As she looked at her calloused hands, a small frowned etched itself on her face. She wasn’t exactly tired per se; there was still much of daylight to continue practicing her taijutsu.
But she didn’t want to continue. Yes, it proved as a wonderful source of distraction, but apparently it didn’t do enough to force that irritating incident out of her mind. Okay, it wasn’t irritating either, but it distracted her and she didn’t understand why it did.
So Sasuke kissed her. It wasn’t that big of a deal. Except it was her first kiss. Therefore it was a big deal.
She didn’t even want to do it. Well, maybe it wasn’t that she didn’t want to, but it was the principle of it. He hadn’t even asked! It’s not like she minded much, but why did he do that to her? Wasn’t he supposed to be Sakura-chan’s boyfriend or something along those lines? But then, Hinata knew for a fact that the two never “officially” dated.
Then, Sasuke must’ve been drunk, the girl concluded. It made no sense otherwise. Except it was in the afternoon and Sasuke just left the market with her so he couldn’t have been drunk. But if he wasn’t drunk, then why did he do it?
“Ugh, this is so confusing,” Hinata mumbled, burying her flushed face in her palms. On another level of thinking, she hoped the problem would go away or at least fix itself so she didn’t have to deal with it. She didn’t want to. It was too embarrassing to even think it.
“You look frustrated,” she heard a familiar voice tell her. A moment’s thought confirmed the voice belonged to Shino and she turned her attention to her teammate.
She smiled and told him she was fine, just a little tired. She knew she was lying on some level, but she was mentally exhausted so she wasn’t completely lying. He motioned for her to follow him and return to the urban part of the village and she wordlessly followed him.
But she began to think again. And the issue involving Sasuke had yet to solve itself. She glanced at the darkly dressed teen and opened her mouth to ask. Perhaps he would know what to do.
“Shino-kun, I have something I want to ask you,” Hinata began as she fell into her old habit of poking the ends of her fingers together. When he nodded, Hinata looked away from him and cast her eyes upon the ground.
“My friend has this problem, and I want to help her. There’s this person that she knows and they know each other because they’ve run into the other for a few times. So, they know each other a little more than acquaintances, but they’re not exactly friends. Anyway, she caught him at the market, and he helped her take some bags home. As she walked him out, he kissed her; now she doesn’t know what to do.”
Shino focused his shining sunglasses on the sixteen year old, observing her. “How does your friend feel about this?”
“She said she doesn’t know. She doesn’t understand why that person did what he did,” Hinata replied.
“So she’s not upset?”
“N-not really,” the girl stuttered as her cheeks began to tinge ruby-red. “But she doesn’t really like him either. My friend used to be afraid of him, and she still is, at least a little bit. So she doesn’t want to ask him why he did it.”
Shino raised an eyebrow at Hinata’s flushed and befuddled expression.
“I see. I believe I’ve discovered the reason to your dilemma,” Shino commented thoughtfully.
“Really?” Hinata asked her teammate.
“Yes, but it would be best if your friend discovered it herself,” Shino stated. He continued to walk while the girl followed him. After a while, he finally said, “Did you know that termites take a nuptial flight? But it’s hard for them to successfully complete the flight since many of them die before they can find a mate. But when they do, they can finally start a colony. During that time, the male termite is always by the queen’s side. Eventually, they merge and become one. Isn’t that interesting?”
“Shino-kun,” Hinata started but unable to finish her thought. At last she just replied saying, “That really doesn’t help with anything.”
Shino shrugged, as he stood and bade her goodbye, leaving Hinata more confused than before.
-:-:-
The sun brightly hovered in the mid-day sky. People filed into the streets for a late lunch, and homemakers shopped in the vegetable and meat stands. Many people scurried about, minding their businesses and others returned to work.
A teenage ninja girl wandered aimlessly in the streets. Her opaque eyes were lost in thought while replaying her earlier conversion with Shino. She sometimes wished that he wasn’t so cryptic, but that was just Shino. He always indirectly told you something useful; it was just a matter of decoding his words that took effort.
Hinata inwardly smiled as she wondered how Naruto would read into Shino’s random information.
“Watch out!” a voice alerted her, she looked up.
A loud crash followed by a squeak.
“Mother of-“ Hinata cursed her luck at not having worn her forehead protector as its original purpose. The sudden wave of pain left a hot sensation on her forehead, and she thanked the wonders of endorphins as it soon numbed her frazzled nerves.
She bitterly glanced at the offending cloud-grey metal pole. The girl knew she should have paid attention to her surroundings, but she was engrossed in her thoughts. Now she paid for her inept abilities while bright white spots kept blinking in and out of her vision.
A hand appeared in front of her face. She looked up and stared into familiar charcoal-black eyes.
Hinata flushed in embarrassment as she briefly wondered whether Sasuke heard the incomplete curse slip past her tongue, but quickly dismissed it. She reached for his hand and realized that it was larger than her own. Why she noticed, she didn’t want to question. When she regained her footing, she brushed the dust off her pants.
A voice argued that she should confront him about the supermarket incident; however, her little trip to the ground probably destroyed any respect he had for her as a ninja. She took a deep breath and met his blank gaze. She finally forced an uneasy smile as she said, “Thank you. I guess I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“You’re extremely clumsy aren’t you? You need stay alert as a ninja,” Sasuke told her.
It’s your fault that I wasn’t paying attention, Hinata thought, slightly nettled by his patronizing comment. Never mind that it was Shino’s words that distracted her, it was indirectly Sasuke’s fault. She wished that she didn’t care that it was but a fleeting moment where she was off guard. But it meant that her skills were still terribly flawed and that was something that she couldn’t forgive herself.
“I guess I’m still below-average in many respects,” the girl muttered. She knew it wasn’t true but she didn’t want to explain her inattention. If on a mission, that moment could have killed her. That was part of the reason to it being pathetic.
“I or maybe I’m supposed to be a normal citizen who doesn’t have to worry about anything aside from the immediate welfare of my family. Even then, it’s a little,” Hinata shrugged with a small smile as she left her sentence unfinished. She probably intended for it as a joke, but Sasuke saw no mirth in her eyes; only a brief flash of defeat that disappeared a moment later.
“You’re not normal, Hinata. Neither of us are,” Sasuke informed her.
They were both different from ordinary people; they knew that.
Even if Hinata wasn’t as high on par as Sasuke, she knew that she was far different from common people.
Because they weren’t normal, they couldn’t achieve the normalcy of which many Konoha citizens took advantage. They would fulfill their duties as ninjas, and die as young warriors on the battlefield. They won’t have a chance to experience a real family life, nor will they have time to find someone to intimately share their lives. If they were lucky, they may achieve their goals; yet they were living on a schedule. They only had so much time life and because they were ninjas, they couldn’t achieve a lifestyle of their choosing.
Each took another person’s life in their short sixteen years of life, and will likely watch a teammate die before their own untimely death. The duo waited and lived in a constant tempest of blood, always alert for fear of being killed in their sleep. If not already, they will become targets of assassination and they will be hunted. Their jobs caused them to close the door to their hearts, and their lives forced them to cage their souls.
As shinobi, they didn’t have the option of normalcy.
But, the reality was that they weren’t just shinobi; they were humans. As much as they wanted to deny it, they wanted to feel, even if just for a moment.
That’s why they were curious of the strange feelings that stirred since the bizarre market incident that seemed more than a lifetime ago. As humans, they wanted to uncover the puzzling emotions that others apparently saw but refused to tell. It was something that they wanted to know, yet both were too frightened to step any closer.
The girl gave a small smile as she leaned against the pole. She kept her gaze on the pavement as if she were thinking.
“I suppose that’s true,” Hinata finally uttered in a voice so soft that Sasuke wouldn’t have heard her had he not paid attention. Her resigned voiced became wistful as she continued her quiet speech. “But I can try, can’t I? Besides, it’s nice to live a normal life every once in a while, isn’t it? Just to escape from the craziness of my own life. Until I’m at a point where I’m forced to always stay in ninja role, I can try to escape my life as a ninja, and as a Hyuga. I’m sure you feel that way sometimes.” She locked her gaze with his and consciously told herself to not look away. After a long moment in which Hinata let Sasuke absorb the words, she finally whispered, “Otherwise, you wouldn’t waste your time walking here when you could train.”
It was a long while before either of them said anything, but it was something that happened often between the two of them, so the silence wasn’t awkward in the sense that neither of them had anything to say. Rather, the awkwardness spawned from not knowing how to phrase the question in both their minds.
Neither of them really knew the other aside from their few meetings. Perhaps, that foreignness could be changed. After all, it never hurt to know another person. Maybe it will even take away the biting solidarity that each felt.
“Would you like to have a cup of coffee?” Sasuke finally asked. Although that wasn’t the question that he intended to ask, he decided that he would slowly take the first plunge and hopefully, he wouldn’t drown in the water. Yet it wouldn’t be until years later when he will realize how much her answer will change their future relationship when he thinks back to that moment, day itself.
Opaque eyes widened in surprise. She was silent for a brief moment before she gave a small grin, her cheeks a rosy scarlet. “Okay.”
And that was the only answer that he needed as she walked ahead of him, leading them to a café. He saw her hands clasped together from the back, and at that moment, he wanted to know the girl. He wanted to know what made her laugh and what made her cry. What she did when in battle, and what she did when she surrounded by children?
He realized that he didn’t have a very long life, and every moment gone was a moment closer to death’s welcoming arms. But in that time, maybe he could find someone who can make him feel again, a person for whom he can honestly smile. Maybe, Hinata could be the one who can show him what normalcy is.
“Sasuke-kun,” Hinata started as she turned to look at him. She just realized that it was three in the afternoon, and that he intended to treat her. “Are you sure I’m not imposing on your training time?”
Sasuke looked at the girl. “You’re the one who said it’s nice to get away once in a while.”
Uncertainty laced her voice as the girl asked, “But, you’re not taking time out of your schedule to do this?”
The brunet didn’t say anything before he walked pass her and said, “I’m the one who asked you.”
Although she didn’t see it, Hinata thought she heard a smirk in his voice. She couldn’t help the small grin on her face as she chased after him.
::owari::