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Chapter Text

She spends a lot of time watching birds these days.

When all is said and done, she and the rest of the allied shinobi from Konoha don’t make their return home until late October, after they’ve taken the time to dismantle their temporary lodgings and pack away their belongings.

Once they pass the gate and she’s enthusiastically waved off by her sensei and remaining teammate, she trudges home, tosses every piece of her armor to the floor, and spends the next hour the shower, sitting on the tiles with her face pressed up against the wall as the water grows hotter and steam gathers around her.

When it starts to burn she makes it hotter, until her skin darkens from chapstick pink to flaming red. Part of her is struck by a masochistic urge to watch it boil off her bones, dissolving and sliding off her body like butter, like snow, reduced down to liquid fat and muscle to spill down the drain.

What actually happens, though, is that the water goes cold, her nose begins to run, and eventually she’s forced to concede that death via heatstroke is off the table, at least for another day.

And that the whole idea was pretty stupid to begin with anyway, she thinks sullenly, as she shuffles to her bed.

Instead of dying, or waiting to die, she spends the next week in bed, lights off, blinds shut, same pair of clothes. Her armor lies on the floor where she left it, along with her days’ old laundry and discarded towel, which is dried stiff and crunches under her feet when she walks to and from the bathroom.

She doesn’t even feel bad. Just…

There isn’t a name she can put on it, just that she wants to lie in bed, stare up at the ceiling, and never have to talk to another person again for the rest of her life. On the seventh day, as she ruminates over the greasy, stringy pieces of hair that keep falling in her face, something scratches at her window, a low scraping noise that makes her pick her head up.

For a minute she assumes it’s Lee or Gai-sensei, come to summon her for something pointless, but it’s too indiscriminate, too vague to be a shinobi trying to get her attention.

A few more seconds pass, only for the scratching sound to be followed by the flutter of wings.

Birds. There are birds outside her window.

Frantically, like some kind of animal, Tenten rolls out of bed and crawls over to the window, clinging to the sill as the birds converse outside. One of the birds chirps again, high and clear and perfectly pitched, and somehow it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever heard in her life. She tries to count them unseen, the way Neji used to, based on their scraping, their vague shadows—one, two—

Her chest aches suddenly, and she fists her hand in the front of her shirt to hold back the sudden sob that overcomes her.

There’s more scraping, more invisible movement that she’s desperate to see. Tenten fumbles for the cord before slowly, by bare inches, nudging her blinds up. She moves excruciatingly slow, but the shift is still sudden enough that the birds startle and take off in a rush of feathers before she can get a good look at them.

She waits for several seconds, holding her breath as if her unseen stillness was enough to make the birds come back, before she crumples to the floor and sobs again until her throat burns and her entire body feels empty.

After she’s cried herself hoarse, she pulls herself up into a sitting position to stare at her oily, red-eyed reflection in the window until she lets out a sound of disgust and trudges back to her bathroom to take a shower.

Things come together a little easier after that. She picks up her laundry, leaves the house, wanders the village. Pulls her jacket tight around herself, circles the block until she runs into someone she knows, and puppets her body through a conversation.

And she goes home at the end, and does it again the next day, and the next. Wake, dress, wander. Be normal again.

She watches for birds a lot closer, though, auspiciously, if just so she can relive the single, untainted moment of happiness she felt as she listened to them chirp back and forth outside of her window.

Konoha has always had a warmer climate compared to the rest of the Land of Fire, more temperate, somehow, due to the dense foliage around the village. She spends the next few weeks trying to find the same birds, whatever they were, but she gradually discovers that there’s enough of a change between seasons that most birds migrate in the late fall.

Instead, there are large swarms of crows that take to nestling in the browning trees around the village, filling them until their little black bodies begin to outnumber the leaves that remain. They’re replaced by fat, ruffled sparrows as fall turns to winter, tiny little brown birds no larger than the size of her fist, that gradually slim down as what little snow they get that year begins to melt.

It’s a quiet winter, for as brief as it is. Training with Lee, visits with Gai-sensei. The Hyuuga family has a funeral service for Neji in early November, a quiet, serious affair that Gai-sensei and Lee interrupt every few minutes with their sniffling and sobbing.

Normally she’d be the one to chastise them for not showing better manners, but it takes everything she has to keep her own tears under control.

So, they escape her wrath just once, on a technicality.

There’s not much of a demand for missions, with half the village sitting comfortably on lump sum payments, their reward for returning alive from the war. Her own check comes at the end of December, relegated to the bottom of the list with no family name, no clan.

Still, the check comes, her name is on the envelope, and suddenly she has more money than she’s ever had in her lifetime. The excitement dissipates a little over the coming weeks, after she deposits her check and does absolutely nothing with it. She lives semi-responsibly as it is, saving a hundred or so ryo for every hundred she indulges, and blows everything else on arms.

Aside from a few nicer dinners, and a few not-quite-extravagant purchases, the money doesn’t make much of a difference in her day to day life. She spends several weeks drumming her fingers on her apartment counter as she looks over the numbers in her checkbook before she gets sick of it all and puts in a call to a civilian property broker.

The purchase goes through faster than she expected, but it isn’t until early April that she’s in a position to begin moving her things into the upstairs apartment and ordering merchandise for the store below.

It’s then, as she’s bussing boxes in and out of her front door, that she first notices the blue birds. The blue birds - and that’s all they ever are to her, because she’s never been the kind of person to know the names of birds, unless they’re common ones - fly over her head as they go to and from a tiny nest stuffed into one of the awnings overlooking the entrance to her store.

The nest is high enough that she never gets a good look inside, but she catches both birds flitting back and forth with various scraps in their beaks—broken twigs, pieces of hair or fur, discarded wires and pins.

In the midst of moving, she finds herself pausing every other load or so just to watch them, and part of her just can’t bear to take down the nest and see them go somewhere else, even as the walkway in front of her store becomes spattered with their discarded feathers and trash.

She seriously considers it, though, the first time that she exits the store only to be struck in the back by white droppings.
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Things carry on in a mostly normal fashion until that spring, when she’s trying to elbow her way into her shop, and the brown and red bird shows up. The door to the store is locked, her hands are full, and her keys are tucked away uselessly in her back pocket, so she spends several minutes maneuvering the box she’s carrying against the door while she fishes for her keys.

She manages to find her keys just as the bird lands on the window sill of a house across the street, before quickly flapping over to the building next door, where it perches again, facing in towards the house, before moving again to the next building.

It’s unusual for that alone. Birds of prey usually don’t make it far into Konoha itself, except for the ones who like to nest on top of the Hokage Tower and throw dismembered songbirds down onto unsuspecting pedestrians.

The bird hops down several more houses before it lands on the sill of a bookstore several buildings down from her, again facing in towards the store.

The bird cocks its head forward, arching closer to the window, almost as if it were peeking inside the shop. Its red tail feathers perk up as it strains its neck leaning further in, before it falls back on its talons and scratches the side of its head.

Tenten’s arms are beginning to ache, so she quickly unlocks her door, drops the box in the doorway, and slips back out again just as the red bird is jumping to another of the bookstore’s windows, where it repeats the same process.

It’s some kind of falcon, she thinks, or a hawk. Something like that. She isn’t a seasoned enough bird watcher to know the difference between the two, but she’s sure enough to think it has to be something close.

After a few quick, twitchy movements of its head, the bird tucks its wings under it and takes off again, this time down to the end of the street, where it continues on. Without another thought, Tenten locks the door to her shop and heads off after it, hopping onto the next building’s roof as the bird rises higher in the sky.

Predictably, the bird leads her out of the city proper and towards its outskirts, along the edge of the wall, where it’s more forest than city. It continues until it reaches Training Ground Nine, where it settles down onto a tree branch and starts preening its wings.

There isn’t much out there, especially for—

“Oh.”

Sasuke Uchiha blinks tiredly in her direction, perched lazily on a boulder like a snake sunning itself. He’s resting just under the spot where the bird landed, half-cast in the tree’s shadow, his face partially concealed. She’d been so focused on the bird that somehow she’d missed him - an entire human being - sitting there in front of her.

Tenten takes a few steps closer, trying to look nonchalant as she approaches Sasuke and the bird. “He’s yours,” she says, half-question, as she points at it.

“Yeah.”

Her brows furrow. She’s assumed, based almost solely on the fact that he’d apparently been released from their custody at some point, that he’s on good terms with the village. That, and the fact that the extreme anxiety over Sasuke that had gripped the village in the weeks following their return to Konoha seemed to have dissipated at some undefined point without her realizing.

The particulars of his situation have probably been explained to her in excruciating detail, likely more than once, but it’s something she hasn’t had the presence of mind to pay too close attention to, and the actual breakdown of his situation is beyond her.

Damn.

“So uh…” Him being around makes her want to assume he’s there legally, and she’s fairly certain that she’d know if he wasn’t. Or something like that. “What’s the little guy up to?” she asks, nodding over at his bird.

Sasuke’s lips thin. He glances up at the bird, who continues to preen. “He’s looking for Kakashi.”

Her back straightens at such an informal address of their Hokage, and a feeling of unease creeps over her. Again, she finds herself unsure whether he’s in the village as an ally, or something more sinister. She shifts, feeling the comforting clink of metal as her weapons shift just under her clothes.

At the very least, she didn’t show up unarmed.

“Is Hokage-sama expecting you?”

Sasuke wrinkles his nose. It’s oddly expressive for him, someone whose face only ever seems to move by micrometers.

“He knows I’m here. He’s got intel from someone that’s meant for me.” His single, visible eye drifts away from her, staring off at some empty corner of the training ground. “This whole trip would have been a waste of time if I have to leave without it.”

Tenten frowns. “And you can’t have someone else coordinate that?”

Sasuke turns back again and gives her an unexpectedly pitiable look. “He’s doing it on purpose.”

Purposely avoiding him? Tenten withholds a snicker. She can see why he might. “So your bird—” she starts, pointing again.

“Was helping me with that.”

“Uh. Right.” She places her hands on her hips and stands there like an idiot, embarrassed for reasons she has difficulty articulating. “I just thought it was weird to see a bird like that in the village, peeking in people’s windows. You know.”

“Hn.”

“Do you know—”

“You’re Lee’s teammate,” he says. He doesn’t say anything else, so she assumes that means he doesn’t actually remember her name.

“Tenten.”

“Sure.”

There’s no apology in it, either for forgetting her name, or for admitting it so bluntly. It’s unabashedly rude, in a way that has her missing Neji, for as much as she’d gotten past his outward prickliness.

Tenten sighs, before she plops down in the grass, tilting her head up at the sky.

She’s never been one to dwell on loss for long, as orphaned and practical as she is.

Still, the thought of Neji fills her with an empty sort of ache, the way she feels leaving the house without the constant, steady weight of her weapon pouch on her hip. Some days it’s soft like that now, something she doesn’t even think about until she turns around and he isn’t there, when Lee and Gai-sensei take off towards some hasty, knuckle-headed challenge, and there’s no one else left behind but her.

She’s starting to get used to it, but the phantom ache still lingers, and there’s not much she’s been able to do about that.

“So it’s back and forth with you, huh?” she asks. “In and out of the village?”

“Hn.”

He doesn’t offer her anything more than that. It’s another way he reminds her of Neji, she thinks again, this time much a little more fondly. It was slow, patient work, waiting for him to warm to her, breaking down all the protective barriers he’d put up around himself.

In the end, though, it came down to acclimation rather than breaking anything—because as much as she did want to push him at times, Neji relaxed at a gradual enough pace that she was content to wait for him.

And the wait paid off, eventually.

He wasn’t someone who naturally opened up to others, like Lee did. It was more confidential, as if everything he shared with her was a confession of sorts, meant only for the two of them. And with him gone—

Well. There wasn’t much to a secret with only one person left to keep it.

“I don’t think the Hokage is going to show any time soon,” she admits. It still isn’t perfectly clear to her why the Hokage is avoiding Sasuke, but she takes Sasuke at his word that he is. “What are you gonna do while you wait?”

“Hn.” He leans back against the tree behind him, closing his eyes. “He can’t keep it up forever.”

So nothing, she interprets.

“Why not come back into the village?” she asks. “If not—well, you probably aren’t here to visit with the rest of our genin class anyway, but what about your genin team?”

“Quieter out here.”

It’s a little less refined than how Neji would have said it, but she’s smart enough to take the hint.

“Right.”

Part of her doesn’t feel entirely comfortable letting him go on his own, regardless of whether the Hokage is apparently expecting him or not. It isn’t all that unusual for a shinobi to leave the village with their Hokage’s approval - Lady Tsunade, after all, was an example of that throughout Tenten’s entire childhood - but usually those kinds of traveling shinobi left of their own volition, without accumulating substantial criminal records.

At least, that’s how she always assumed it happened.

The trees overhead rustle with a sudden gust of wind, and a flock of birds passes overhead, back towards the village—doves, maybe. They’re close enough to white, though she’s learned doves come in darker shades than that, like shadows of themselves.

It feels like a sign, as much as she doesn’t want it to be one.

Tenten sighs. She isn’t exactly at a good stopping point in her unpacking, but she thinks she’s probably still several weeks away from that point regardless of how much she gets through that day.

She turns back to Sasuke, who still hasn’t budged. His bird is perched quietly above him, head tucked under his wing as he rests, his work apparently done for now.

“You know,” she starts, “I’ve got a place back in the village. I just bought it, haven’t even moved in all the way yet.” She shifts a moment, trying to think how to best frame the offer for him. “It’s a shop but, uh, no one goes there yet. Still not open, you know.”

Sasuke doesn’t respond. Doesn’t even so much as open his eyes.

Tenten sighs. “Take it or leave it, I don’t really care which. I’m just saying if you want to actually go into the village, you’re welcome to crash at my place until Hokage-sama decides to track you down.”

To her surprise, he opens his eyes and nods. “Okay.”

Tenten blinks. “Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Okay.”

It is the stupidest conversation she has ever had in her life.

Sasuke doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’s content to wait for others - and if his attitude towards the Hokage is anything to go by, it’s the exact opposite - so she hauls herself off the ground, lightly dusting off her pants before she shoves her hands into her pockets.

“It’s close to the edge of town anyway,” she starts, conversational, as they head back towards the village proper. They walk there in lieu of running, Sasuke’s cloak swishing behind them as she traces back the path she’d taken there. “It’s actually a lot easier for the store to be closer to the edge of Konoha, since shipments can go around the busier parts of the village instead of having to head straight through them.”

Again, Sasuke doesn’t reply at all. Which is fine, she guesses, as long as he doesn’t mind her talking.

With another sigh, she leads him back the rest of the way back into the village. For a moment, as they pass into her neighborhood, she wonders whether she should be concerned about any of her neighbors spotting them together, given what his reputation is, but then figures he isn’t the worst sort of client for a weapons’ seller to have.

Maybe he’d even be a good one.

With that thought to chew on, she jabs her key into her front door, hazarding a glance over her shoulder to see if any of the neighbors she hasn’t quite met yet are watching.

She doesn’t see any, but really—what’s the worst that could happen?

“It’s still a bit of a work in progress,” she says, waving her hand towards the tarps and unopened boxes scattered around the shop. She gropes along the wall for the light switch and flips it on, turning the dull grey room into a slightly less dull brown room. Still not ideal.

It’s one more thing to add to her growing list of renovation projects—more lamps, more overhead lighting, maybe even another window of two on the outside, to bring in more natural light and make the store seem more open.

“I haven’t had time to put up shelves or anything yet, so most things are still in boxes,” she explains. “I only started moving in this month, so it’s still all coming together.”

The box she’d abandoned when she went chasing after his bird is still sitting in the middle of the doorway, awkwardly blocking their path.

There’s a few other boxes arranged around the front of the store, set down randomly with no particular thoughts yet as to how her store will ultimately be arranged. The top to one of them is loose and hangs slightly askew over the top, tossed aside quickly after her perfunctory check to ensure it matched the invoice that’d come with it.

Sasuke doesn’t seem to have any compunctions about privacy, because he runs his hand along the edge before pushing the top off to the side, revealing her most recent purchase.

“Kunai?” Sasuke asks, almost confused.

“And some other things.” She gestures at some of the other unopened crates around the room—other small, squat boxes of shuriken, scrolls, and kunai, larger, more secure containers for larger weapons—staves, axes, and swords. “More generally, weapons. My specialty.”

His eyes seem to linger on the skinnier boxes along the wall, so she brings one of the few opened staves over for him to get a better look.

“Check it out.” She holds the end out for him to take, then leans over to direct his attention towards the metal tip. “It’s collapsible,” she explains, tracing her finger down to the various grooves where the staff is meant to shrink into itself. “If, for whatever reason, you find yourself unable to open or access a scroll in quick enough time, the trigger can be activated manually, without any chakra.”

Sasuke takes the staff silently, tossing it up once lightly to adjust his grip on it, holding it a few inches up from the base.

There isn’t as much room to move around the store as she’d like, though Sasuke seems perfectly comfortable flexing in the limited range that he has. That’s another thought she files away for later, because how on earth is she going to sell anything if there’s no room in her store for people to wave things around?

“Hm.” She can tell from the way he moves that Sasuke would be more than competent with the staff in a fight, but it seems fairly clear that it isn’t his natural inclination, mostly from the way that his grip continues to shift to accommodate itself.

As he tosses the staff up again in order to adjust his grip, she takes stock of his missing arm, the empty sleeve that shifts beside him each time he moves, though his grip on the staff is confident and practiced.

“You’re a sword guy,” she pronounces, watching him test the weight over his palm. “This probably feels a little top heavy for you, huh?”

He turns to her, a flicker of surprise in his eyes. There’s no spoken question, but she can read one in his expression.

“It’s the way you angle your wrist,” she tells him. “And your shoulders.”

“And that gives it away, huh,” he muses. “So you do know your weapons.”

She almost gets the sense that there’s an insult buried in there, but she shrugs it off easily. It’s practice, she supposes, for having to deal with customers on a day-to-day basis. “Well, if anyone in the village is gonna get you properly outfitted, it’s me.”

“I have a contact,” he says dully, as he continues to turn the staff in his hand, threading it expertly between his fingers. “An old family friend,” he adds, with no further elaboration.

Tenten resists the urge to roll her eyes. “Well, unless they’re someone in the village, let me be the person you come to when you’re here and you need something. I know quality when I see it, and once I get a feel for your preferences, I’ll know when to hold onto something that’ll be good for you.”

Without thinking about it, she sets her hand on the handle of the staff, just above his. “I can show you—”

Instantly, like a snake striking out from a bush, his hand darts out and snatches her wrist. The staff sinks, supported only by her grip, until it clinks down onto the floor behind her.

“What are you aiming at?” Sasuke demands. His fingers slide up her arm and press into her elbow, not enough to hurt, but enough to hold her in place.

Something flashes in his eyes, almost too quick for her to catch it. They’re intimidating, this close up—his normal eye, the one that’s uncovered by his bangs, is black, so much so that she isn’t able to make out where his iris ends and his pupils begin. It’s dark, endlessly.

The other one, though. Tenten’s pulse quickens. The Rinnegan—a doujutsu so rare it may as well not even exist. Another relic of the Sage of Six Paths, a lingering ghost of his power.

She remembers holding his fan in her hands, the way the handle nestled in her palm, like it was meant to be there. Her grip on the staff tightens. “I’ve got something that I think you’ll like, is all. And I’ll even cut you a good deal on it, if you ask nicely.”

Sasuke blinks. His expression softens a little bit, falling from actively hostile to vaguely inconvenienced. “Yeah?”

She grins. “Yeah. And it’ll blow this out of the water,” she says, as she pulls her arm from his grip and sets the staff back onto her counter. “It came out of Kiri,” she starts, digging through the skinny boxes around her counter as she tries to pick out the specific one she’s looking for. They accumulate endlessly—eyes bigger than your stomach, Neji would say.

A thirst for the nectar of life, Gai-sensei would say, or something stupid like that.

“There’s a special method they use there, with sea water,” she tells Sasuke as she fishes around. “It completely changes the texture of the metal. It does take some getting used to, but it’s uncommon enough that it can occasionally give you the upper hand with someone unfamiliar with it.”

Sasuke is apparently content to let her continue chatting on her own, but when she pokes her head up, box in hand, he’s staring down at her again, his eyes locked closely on her.

“It affects the weight distribution as well,” she tells him, matter-of-fact. “It’s a little heavier overall, but the additional momentum that gives you might help, especially with your arm—you won’t have to try as hard to compensate.” She tosses the crate onto another nearby table, over top of the various papers and junk that’s managed to collect there in the short amount of time she’s owned the place.

Again, she finds herself sizing his form up. From his proficiency with the staff, she assumes the hand he has is his dominant one. Though most shinobi who specialize in handling weapons learn to use them ambidextrously, they still tend to show a preference for their dominant hand and are generally more skilled with it.

It still makes him a bit novel, though, and the thought of outfitting him seems like an especially fun challenge, one that doesn’t come around often. For a lot of shinobi, the loss of a limb - and an arm, at that - would be a career ending move, especially if they were the type to rely heavily on ninjutsu, as many were.

But then again, not every shinobi would be deterred.

Gai-sensei’s injuries hardly seem to have slowed him down at all—the range of weapons he could use now was limited somewhat, now that he needed to rely on his hands more for mobility, but it certainly hasn’t interrupted his training schedule, nor has it done much to keep him from trying to dictate hers.

It brings a begrudging smile to her face as she unpacks the sword to show Sasuke.

“Here,” she says, offering it to him hilt-first. “See how you like it.”

Sasuke looks her over again carefully before he grabs the hilt and slides the sword slowly out of the sheath, making it quiver against her hand as the steel slides along its edges.

He balances the blade in his hand, letting it tilt back and forth as he tries to find a rhythm with it. Like he’d done with the staff, he tosses the handle in the air once and catches it, arcing his arm with an appreciative hum when he points it down towards the floor.

Tenten smiles in spite of herself—he might not be traveling with much, but he certainly knows his way around a good blade, and he knows quality when he sees it.

And he definitely can see it now.

She sets her hands on her hips and grins. “I can tell you like it. You don’t even have to say it.”

He fixes his one, dark eye on her, sizing her up carefully. Slowly, with all the carefulness of a snake coiling into itself, Sasuke sets the sword down, bare, on a nearby box.

“Uh…” Tenten looks around her for its sheath. “I know I just had it…”

Before she can turn away, Sasuke is blocking her path, rounding on her so fast that she almost hits her head off of his chest. She steps back and instinctively grabs onto the front of his shirt instead, ready to push him off or throw a punch his way if he tries anything funny.

But he doesn’t.

For a moment, he just stands there, looming over her with his mismatched eyes, his dark, silky hair.

He’s beautiful, she thinks, in a way that must make her feel just a little bit insane. And he had the nerve to forget her name?

“What is it?” Sasuke asks. He takes another step closer, though this time she holds her ground and keeps her hand between them, bent slightly at the elbow, her knuckles pressing into his chest. “What do you want from me?”

“What do I—” Tenten shakes her head. “Nothing,” she answers, with a frown. She hesitates, then drops her grip on his shirt and shrugs. “I mean, some things, maybe. You’d make a good test dummy for some curved shuriken I have, and if you want to buy things from me, I won’t stop you. I’m just getting into business here, so…”

He leans in closer, scrutinizing her, until his bangs tickle the side of her face. His Rinnegan takes on an eerie glow to it, almost too bright when it’s that close to her own eyes.

Normally, a guy who tried to intimidate her like that can expect one of two things: a knee in his gut, or a nice, closed fist between the eyes. Or a knife, she supposes, if she can reach one.

It’s all fair game for a guy who gets too close into her personal space, especially when he’s dumb enough to get within her reach.

Instead of stabbing Sasuke, though, she grabs him by the shirt again and pulls him down to kiss him.

Internally, she registers that it’s a really, really stupid thing to do: Sasuke doesn’t exactly give off approachable vibes, and she can’t imagine he’s all that welcoming towards anyone, let alone someone whose name he just recently remembered.

That he probably never bothered to learn at all, despite having had years to do so.

It’s stupid, but his lips are warm, his body is warm, and that combination is just enough to have her humming with contentment into the kiss.

He initially stiffens, just long enough to make her fear for her life, but after a moment, he seems to register that he isn’t being attacked, and he relaxes into it.

She tugs him closer, dragging him down by the front of his shirt until she can just peer down into his broad collar. He responds with an unexpected hunger, bearing down on her and pressing his body up against hers.

It catches her off guard, but she likes it enough to gently nudge him back with her knee and walk him towards one of the display tables set up around her shop, all without breaking contact.

Tenten gropes behind him, feeling for the edge of the table as his back settles against it. “Give me a sec,” she murmurs into his lips, as she guides him backward with her hips.

The material of his shirt is surprisingly thin, breathable and airy for spring. She feels the ripple of bone and muscle beneath the fabric as she runs her hand over his chest, up to his shoulders.

“I want to fuck you,” she whispers into his ear, standing on the tips of her toes to get as close to his face as she can. “Right now.”

There’s a slight pause. “Yeah?”

“Gonna stop me?”

“No.”

Good enough for her.

She loops one hand over the back of his neck, guiding him down further for her to meet, to give her greater access. The next kiss is awkward, his lips just grazing the side of her mouth.

There’s very little she hates more than being off the mark, so she takes special care that the next one is right on target. Their lips meet, her grip on the back of his neck tightening so that she can ensure she gets it right.

Sasuke lets out a noise, a moan, a groan—something that tingles so perfectly against her lips that she hates that she couldn’t hear it out loud.

She slips a knee around his hips, using the table for leverage as she tries to climb higher, up into his arms and mouth, just so she can draw that sound out of him again. He helps her along, setting one hand down to cup her ass to either give her a boost, or—well, to cup her ass.

It still isn’t enough. Tenten pushes him back into the table, climbing onto it and him just as he’s settling back, grabbing his shoulders for leverage. He uses his elbow to hold himself up, bearing his weight down on it as she crawls over him and makes herself comfortable in his lap.

Her feet hang haphazardly off the front of the table, with Sasuke squished between her and it. He learns forward and slips his fingers under her shirt, pulling it off of her in one fluid motion. It clinks when he tosses it to the floor, loose knives and other weapons clanking into one another when it hits.

His eyes widen, either from the unexpected weight and sound, or from the sight of her half-naked torso criss-crossed with straps and holsters for weapons.

Whichever it is, both are an enormous boost to her ego.

“Loose shirts are the best for concealed weapons,” she tells him, as she reaches behind herself to undo one of the straps. “If I was fully dressed for this, you’d be here for almost half an hour just taking off my clothes.”

He snorts, an unexpectedly immature sound from him. “You’d save yourself a lot of the trouble just using fuuinjutsu for that.”

“God, I wanna fuck you stupid.” She pushes him back onto the table, taking hold of his hand, fitting it over her breast, and squeezing it. “I want you to fuck me stupid.”

Sasuke takes the hint, and his grip on her breast tightens.

Tenten grins. “I did all that, so now you’ve gotta do the rest.” She leans back and tugs at the waistband of his pants, just enough for her to see the slope of his abs, though she doesn’t go any further than that.

She arches an eyebrow at him. “What, I can’t be doing all the work now, can I?”

Thankfully, he takes the hint.

Sasuke dutifully sets himself to removing the rest of her clothes, using his teeth to hold one clasp as his fingers deftly remove a belt from around her shoulders. It’s surprisingly inventive, but she supposes that being short a hand would give a man a lot of excuses to get good at using other parts of his body.

And he’s very, very good at it. After removing the holster from her shoulders, he cups the small of her back with his hand while he latches onto her breast, sucking and kissing the sensitive skin, letting his teeth drag over her nipple.

He tugs lightly at the skin as it hardens in his mouth, making her cry out and pull him closer, her fingers tangling into his hair.

Sasuke pauses at the sound, as if waiting to hear from her again, before he nips her a second time, slightly harder, making her cry out again. “Just like that,” he murmurs, setting his hand against her back.

Distantly, when he does it again and she cries out even louder, Tenten has the presence of mind to be thankful that she has an entire building to herself, without roommates or close neighbors to overhear her.

Sasuke’s hand pushes her shoulders forward, angling her chest towards his mouth before it travels downward.

I love this man’s hands, she thinks, as his calloused palm squeezes her ass, rounding it affectionately with his palm. Hand, she corrects herself. Letting Sasuke Uchiha have two hands would just be unfair to everyone else.

“I want this off,” Tenten mutters, feeling around his back for the hem of his shirt.

Sasuke grunts, which she takes to be as good as his agreement.

With his tacit permission, Tenten grabs his shirt by the back and tugs it over his head, tossing it somewhere behind her.

God.

“I’m surprised this hasn’t gone further to your head,” she mutters appreciatively, looking him over, running her hands over his bare skin. Even in the dim light of her store, his body looks flawless, unmarred by the silvery scars or shadowy bumps that so many shinobi have on their bodies. “How you’re able to travel as much as you do without gangs of women trailing after you is a mystery.”

“You’d be surprised,” he mutters. Without any further explanation, he pulls her closer, rolling his hips up against her.

He works quickly from there—he only traces the waistband of her pants for a brief second before his hand slips under it and cups her through her panties. She steadies herself by setting her hands on his shoulders, holding herself upright as he tugs aside her panties and touches her skin to skin.

His fingertips are coarse, hardened the way many shinobi’s are. The friction of his hard skin against her sensitive clit almost feels too good, and she finds herself gradually closing her eyes, losing herself to the feeling of Sasuke’s skilled hands at work.

Tenten coughs up a moan when he presses his thumb into her clit, while circling her entrance with his other fingers. “Done this before?” she breathes, rocking her hips to match his slow movements.

His eyes flicker to hers briefly before he shrugs with his other shoulder. “I’ll figure it out.”

And he does. His fingers play along her folds, making her painfully aware of how wet she is. She rides his hand eagerly, feeling the slick movement of his thumb over her clit.

He works her up quickly, then one finger is teasing her entrance, his thumb diligently circling her clit as he slides his finger inside her. She immediately snaps her legs tight around his hand, trapping it there as he continues to stroke her.

“Fuck,” she spits out when she feels a second finger sliding through her wetness, lightly pushing up into her. She wraps her arms around his neck, tugging him close as she begins to grow tense around him, and another finger pushes into her.

He’s close enough that she can bury her face into his hair as he pushes her closer and closer to the edge, until she finds herself balanced precariously over it, her grip on him growing tighter and tighter.

“That’s good,” she gasps. She slips one hand down and covers his with her own, holding it there, but stopping him from going any further. “I’m good.”

The feeling is almost too good to let go of, but she’s impatient for what comes next.

“Let me just…” Sasuke starts, without finishing. With his hand, he slips her pants off of her hips. She helps him along once he’s gotten them down her thighs, before kicking them off onto the floor.

“Now you,” she says, as she eagerly fumbles for the belt on his pants, rips it off, and tosses it aside.

His pants follow quickly after that, with him lifting his hips to help her tug them down his legs. His erection bobs free immediately, long and firm, ready for her.

“Impatient for me, huh?” she teases, though the look he gives her in return is decidedly unenthusiastic.

She takes him into her hand, squeezing appreciatively at the base. It reminds her of the way it feels to wield a weapon for the first time, her hand molding to the hilt, testing its weight, the feel of it against her palm.

Part of her wonders if he’d mind hearing her describe it that way, but another part is certain it’s the only language he’d be able to understand.

Sasuke hisses, low and through his teeth, as she squeezes him again, her hand working up and down his shaft.

“You’ve got a pretty dick,” she tells him. “It’s got a nice curve to it.”

Sasuke lets out a tiny breath that might have passed for a laugh. “That’s a new one.”

“Don’t get a lot of compliments?”

He grunts, which she isn’t entirely sure how to interpret. Maybe he just isn’t the type to show off his dick to others.

Tenten grins. “Well, trust me when I say yours is a nice one.”

She strokes him again, swiping her thumb gently around the head, then bends over to lightly kiss the tip.

Sasuke sets his head back and rests his hand in her hair, his grip tightening as she works her way down his shaft, the head scraping along the roof of her mouth.

She sucks down further, hollowing out her cheeks as she tries to take him deeper, down to the base, past the back of her throat. From there, it’s all rhythm—Tenten grips him tightly at the base and works her mouth off of him, teasing his slit with her tongue each time she pulls back.

After only a few thrusts like that, Sasuke tugs at her hair, not harshly, but enough to let her know to move off. “Enough,” he murmurs. “That’s enough.”

His grip loosens when she pulls away, though his hand lingers there, twisted in her braids, until she pulls beyond his reach.

Tenten wipes her face with the back of her hand, grinning down at his red, swollen cock. “Too good for you?” she teases. “Couldn’t last any longer?”

Sasuke gives her a flat look. “Do you want me to finish?”

“Definitely not.” She scoots up his body, settling her knees on both sides of his hips. With a glance down at him, just to confirm he’s still watching, Tenten reaches between her legs to grasp his length, guiding him towards her entrance.

Sasuke leans up on his elbow to watch, tilting his head as she positions herself over him.

“Enjoying the view?” she asks. “The least you can do is show me both eyes.”

Instead of a reply, he gazes up at her, his eyes dark and heady. They’re almost suffocating, in a way that makes her wonder if Sasuke Uchiha has ever been able to do anything casually in his lifetime.

Slowly, she positions him at her entrance and guides him inside of her, feeling his blunt head first, pushing into her. It brings a slow, sweet sting, like a healing callus. She breathes out as she sinks down onto him, until he bottoms out, and her knees come to rest on the table.

“There,” she sighs. She rocks her hips a little to adjust to the feeling and shivers, as he sets his single, warm hand on her hip.

He has a glazed over look in both his eyes, like he’s not entirely present.

“I’m gonna start,” she warns him, “so you might want to hold on tight.”

He doesn’t seem concerned by that until she actually does start, rolling her hips up and down experimentally a few times, until she’s able to find the angle right. From there, she fucks herself down on him mercilessly, chasing her sweet spot with every thrust, fucking him hard against the table.

Tenten throws her head back, reveling in the feeling of him sliding in and out of her, gasping and crying out each time she hits it just right.

Which, it being her, is fairly often.

Sasuke lets out another one of those beautiful sounds—a moan, a groan, a yelp that feels hard won as he grows rock hard inside of her, thicker, fuller.

Fucking amazing.

She finds herself chasing her end not long after, her nails digging into his shoulders and chest as she tries to hold it at bay as the pleasure builds. Usually she likes it to go longer, but he’s gotten her worked up and impatient.

And, more importantly, she has the sense that this won’t be a one off deal.

“It’s—” She doesn’t even get a chance to finish her sentence.

Sasuke, as if instantly knowing what she means, slips his hand into the space where their bodies meet, his thumb pressing down hard against her clit. That, combined with the fullness of him inside of her, pushes her all the way over the edge.

She comes with a long groan, every muscle in her body tightening around him as it hits her, the feeling like electricity in her veins. Clumsily, she continues fucking herself with short, stuttering movements, until Sasuke takes mercy on her and guides her through a few long and slow thrusts until she’s slumping against him, her forehead hitting the table next to his cheek.

Sasuke lets out a low hiss when she collapses, still pulsing hot inside of her, hard and aching. The deep thrum of him has her moaning low, already spent but still close enough to her orgasm that she pushes back on it, forcing him deeper inside of her.

It takes her several seconds to fully come back to herself, pushing away the sticky, sweaty flyaway strands of hair stuck to her eyelashes and neck. Sasuke’s hand sits tense against her back, his heart hammering under her like he’s just run a lap around the village, despite the fact that she’d done all the hard work.

“You can… go ahead and finish,” she murmurs. She has no desire to do it herself, not when she can lay over top of him, jelly-like and half-asleep, as he does it himself.

“I’m about to,” Sasuke murmurs back. He takes in a low breath before he starts moving in her again. She groans low, still tender, as he gradually builds back a rhythm.

He buries his face into her neck, his breaths growing more and more erratic the closer he comes, until he’s sucking on her neck to stifle his own moans. His hand digs into the small of her back, fingers pressing into every soft spot they can reach as he comes silently, spilling hot inside of her.

His lips are glued to her neck like a vacuum seal, and in a moment of unexpected self-awareness, she realizes she’s going to either find a really high-collared shirt or a really nonjudgmental medic if she wants to leave the house any time soon.

Sasuke holds her for a moment, his grip on her slowly loosening, until he’s absentmindedly running his hand up and down her hips, feeling all the places where she’s gone slack and boneless.

He seems like he’s done, so Tenten gingerly pulls herself off of him and repositions herself properly on top of him, tucking her head in between his neck and shoulder instead of trying to fit next to him on top of the table.

She’s really gonna have to clean this fucking thing now, she thinks, as she feels Sasuke’s cum slowly dripping down the inside of her thigh.

“You know, I do have a bed upstairs,” she remarks, almost absentmindedly, as she feels his heart beat slow. “I guess I’m a poor host for not taking you there instead.”

Sasuke grunts. “This was fine.”

“Heh.” Tenten sits up, grimacing as the sticky wetness between her legs trickles down her thighs. “Next time, I’ll show you the bed.”

“Next time,” Sasuke echoes.

“Sure, why not?” With a cheeky grin, she slides her legs off the side of the table and snatches her clothes off of the floor. She squeezes her knees together as she waddles to the bathroom to clean up, praying he isn’t able to get up in time to watch her scurry away with his cum leaking out of her.

She flips the bathroom light on, nudging the door close with her shoulder. She runs a washrag under hot water and cringes again as she feels Sasuke’s cum dripping down her thighs, her knees. It’s gonna be even more of a pain in the ass the next time she has a guy over and she has to make the trip down her stairs, assuming she can actually make it to her bedroom.

The door creaks and she startles, caught up in her thoughts, just as Sasuke pushes it open. He leans against the frame for a second, watching her wring the washrag out in the sink.

She assumes he doesn’t do this often, but he should have enough common sense and courtesy to know he’ll get a turn when she’s done. “Uh, you should—”

“Let me,” he says. He takes the rag out of her hands without waiting for a response and kneels down between her legs, ideally low enough that he can’t see how absolutely scarlet her face is. He dabs the towel gently against her thighs in a surprisingly gentlemanly way, as he wipes away the lingering traces of cum away, then quickly cleans himself once he’s done with her.

“Uh.” Her face is unexpectedly warm when he stands up, still naked. The polite thing would be to not stare at his softening dick, except that’s exactly what she’s doing. “Thanks for that.”

“Yeah.” He stares at her with an expression that’s hard for her to make out, even with her years of deciphering Neji’s microexpressions.

Before she can ask, Sasuke tugs her forward by the wrist and pulls her in toward him, placing another kiss on her lips. It’s a slow one this time, unexpectedly thoughtful. His cheek brushes against hers as he pulls away, just shy of nuzzling up against her.

He’s already turned around before she can process it, tossing her towel onto the floor and gathering up his clothes.

“Let me uh—” Her brain is still a little staticy from the kiss, but she’s able to cobble together enough coherent thoughts to say, “Let me just clean up quickly, then it’s all yours.”

Sasuke grunts, which she’s coming to learn is his preferred way of communicating with her.

Well, at least she can interpret what he means.

She quickly finishes up in the bathroom and leaves the door open for Sasuke when she’s done.

“I’m putting on a pot of coffee,” she tells him through the door, before she spends the next five minutes digging through various boxes and bags to find the functional coffeemaker she brought from her old apartment, along with the ground coffee and filters.

By the time Sasuke is done, there’s a steady drip of coffee going, though the pot itself is balanced precariously on top of a box and plugged into one of the low outlets just up from the floor.

“Too many boxes on the counter,” she explains apologetically. “Part of the problem with moving around.”

“It’s fine.” He waves off a mug from her and finds a spot to sit on one of the nearby crates. “Coffee doesn’t do much for me anyway.”

“Right.”

It isn’t the most thrilling pillow talk she’s ever had, but she imagines she’s managed to get more words out of him than most.

There’s some fussing just outside her door, and some scratching along the roofing that tells her that one of the blue birds is either on the way out or just returning to the nest. She wonders whether they’re the type of birds to make a nest and return to it every year, like clockwork, finding their way back home.

Her coffee mug warms her palms as she considers it, the comfort in knowing that leaving isn’t always forever.

That sometimes, what’s lost comes back eventually.

“Kakashi says I need to socialize more.”

“Huh?”

“It’s why he’s avoiding me. Why he’s making me wait. He won’t talk until I’ve socialized.” Like with most things, he doesn’t offer her any more than that.

“Uh. I see.” Tenten blows on her coffee, using the mug to hide her face. She hazards a glance up at him. “Think this counts as socializing?”

Sasuke rewards her with an actual, honest to goodness smile.

It’s a good look on him, she thinks. One she wouldn’t mind seeing a little more of.

After a moment, he shakes his head, but with the smile on his face, she can’t say for certain that he means it as a no.

“It’s hard,” he says, after a moment passes.

This, she thinks as she settles back against the wall behind her, is something familiar—something she learned from watching Neji for so many years, both as his teammate and friend. It’s the point where, even after having an easy segue out of the conversation, he pushes on, if just so he can relieve himself of whatever is weighing on him.

It brings out the bird watcher in her, her inner marksman: the infinitely curious part of her that’s willing to wait and sit quietly just to see what’ll come by.

And so she waits, and Sasuke waves his hand, as if dismissing what he’s going to say before he’s even had the chance to say it. “It won’t turn out the way he wants it to. There’s—” He pauses, and presses his lips together. As if rethinking it, he shakes his head. “There’s a lot of history here. A lot of meaning to specific places and people. I won’t get into it.”

“Sure.” She doesn’t have the slightest clue of what he’s referring to, but she takes his word for it, with growing confidence that she’ll have a future opportunity to hear the full story. “Well, if you’re ever around and want to visit a place that has no meaning at all…” She gestures around her head, at her cluttered mess of a shop.

“Well.” Sasuke turns toward the window, his expression hard to see over the collar of his shirt. “I don’t know if I’d say there’s none.”

Chapter Text

The next time, they do make it up to her bedroom.

It isn’t until almost a month later. Sasuke left Tenten’s shop that day and seemed to drop from the face of the earth altogether—no messenger hawk, no notes, no lingering.

Which, to be fair, was about what Tenten had expected from him anyway, and was more than fine with her. She had no shortage of work to finish before she could officially open her shop, and there was nothing about her brief, if intense, encounter with Sasuke that left her with the sense or expectation that there would be more in the future.

And yet, it’s not even a month later that, in the midst of varnishing some new tables, she opens the windows to her shop to find Sasuke standing in the street facing her shop, silent and awkward, as if he’d been lingering there, just waiting for her to invite him in.

For a moment, Tenten is convinced that’s exactly what he’d been doing.

“Well, well, well! Look who’s back.” Tenten grins. “You wanna come in?”

His nonresponse is enough of a yes to her, so she reaches around and opens the front door. Sasuke slips inside like a shadow and locks the door behind him. Their eyes meet, his solid and unblinking, so intensely trained on her that she almost thinks she can feel it pressing into her skin.

“Yeah?” Without being asked, she pulls her windows back in so they’re only cracked, making it harder for her neighbors to peek inside the shop. “Well, if that’s what you’re here for.”

Without saying anything, Sasuke places one gentle, if insistent, hand at her back and begins guiding her towards her stairs, up to her bedroom.

“It’s good to see you again too, I guess,” Tenten says, turning back to face him as his hand curves around to her front and starts searching out the waistband on her shorts.

Less than a minute later, she’s bent over, face down on her mattress with two of his fingers fucking her open as his lips devour the line of her shoulders, his breath hot on the back of her neck. She’s still almost entirely clothed, save for her shorts and the legs of her mesh armor, which is pooled around her knees.

Sasuke hasn’t even bothered to take off his cloak.

He finger fucks her like a starving man, one who can barely wait for his dinner to cook before he dives into it.

The white hot pleasure coiling in her stomach sets off the sting of his urgency. There hasn’t been anyone else since the last time she’d been with Sasuke—there hasn’t been time for anyone else with all of the renovating she’s been trying to finish.

She lets out a long moan as he pulls out to circle her clit several times with his slick fingers, her body shivering. He dips into her with a third finger, thrusting shallowly at first to get it wet before he pushes in all three.

“Are you—” Tenten’s voice is caught off by a gasp as Sasuke crooks his fingers inside of her, stroking a spot that makes her snap her knees shut around his hand. She bites her lip and adjusts her grip on her bedspread to give herself some leverage, some basis to assert herself against his relentless attention. “You planning to fuck me like this?” she asks, her voice shaky.

“Yes,” Sasuke says, eternally blunt, as he withdraws his fingers from her. “You good?” he asks unceremoniously, though he starts undoing the button on his cloak and tugging his pants down before she even has time to answer.

She turns around to watch him stroke his cock in his hand, using her own wetness off his fingers to slick himself up. He squeezes himself once, lightly, at the base, his cock stiff and solid in his hand.

Their eyes meet, his dark and impossibly still as he watches her through the dark frame of his hair.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m good.”

Sasuke guides her back down onto the bed with his hand, his palm rolling over the curve of her spine with an appreciative slowness. He slots his hips up against her ass, his erection pressing against the backs of her thighs. He cups her chin to steal a kiss, his tongue hungrily parting her lips and sinking into her.

His hand drops to her hips and, seconds later, she feels him lining himself up behind her. With one slow, persistent thrust, he slides inside of her, her moan fully consumed by his mouth. He starts with a few slow, partial thrusts but quickly abandons any semblance of moderation and fucking into her with so much force she knows her hips are going to be sore the next day.

She scrambles for purchase between Sasuke and her bed, her entire body rocking violently with each of his brain-scrambling, hip cracking thrusts, like a ship caught between waves in the ocean.

His fingers find her clit again and begin rubbing insistent, punishing circles against it, her orgasm building, building, building—“Fuck,” Tenten hisses. She’s tight, impossibly full, and each thrust hits deep, until her jaw aches from how tightly she’s clenched it.

Sasuke dutifully drags his lips up her shoulders, her neck, her jaw, making her head spin.
He’s barely been in her house for ten minutes when his pace begins to break up, and she gets the sense that he’s close.

“Don’t…don’t wait on my account,” Tenten gasps. “If you’re gonna come so quick.”

Sasuke growls. “You first.” He punctuates that with another forceful thrust, and his quick fingers on her clit make her see stars. He fucks into her like he’s got something to prove, that something being that he’s got a great dick and knows how to use it.

But there’s one thing that Tenten doesn’t do, and that’s back down from a challenge. She tightens her fists into the bedspread and adjusts herself while he’s still fucking her, arranging her knees on the floor under her to let her grind down hard the next time Sasuke tries to thrust.

He lets out a choked, strangled moan that feels like it’s been ripped out of him. She reaches back with one hand to feel where he’s fucking into her, over her wet thighs and all the sticky, sweaty places their bodies touch.

Sasuke seals his lips against her shoulder, sucking a hickey into her neck that’s so brutal that she wonders whether she’ll need a med-nin to get rid of it.

Tenten gropes between their slick bodies, unable to tell where she ends and he begins, until she has his balls nestled in her palm. “I wanna feel you come,” she says, and then she squeezes.

Sasuke’s entire body tenses as he cums. He muffles his groan with a terrible, claiming bite into her shoulder that has her crying out as she hits her own release and jerks in his grasp, her body shuddering as she constricts around him, squeezing tighter through each wave of her orgasm.

She sighs into her sheets, spent, warm blood trickling down her front from where Sasuke bit her, his hot cum leaking down her thighs. He settles along with her and rests his sweaty head between her shoulder blades, his arm wrapped loosely around her waist, his dick still inside her, growing soft.

It takes a few seconds for him to catch his breath, but he’s unexpectedly tender in the aftermath, pressing gentle kisses to the column of her throat, as if intending to apologize for the absolute havoc he’s wreaked on her body.

Tenten sighs loudly. “Geez,” she starts, then laughs at the sheer absurdity of her situation. Part of her almost wishes this was the kind of thing she could share with Lee, because it’s so bizarre that it feels like a waste to keep it to herself. “What a way for you to show up.”

Sasuke grunts as he slides his hand down her body and slowly pulls out of her, his softening dick thumping against her legs. She grimaces, her hips sore, as more cum and slick dribbles down her thighs and onto her freshly polished floor. Sasuke leans back against her, warm and heavy on her back, nuzzling the back of her neck with his cheek.

Tenten wriggles underneath him, growing damp with a fresh coat of sweat from their combined body heat. “Gonna let me up?” she asks.

“No.” His arm tightens.

Tenten lets out a puff of air that might as well have been a laugh. “I see.”

Sasuke’s hand dips lower, down to her hips, before guiding her back. “Turn around.”

She does, and Sasuke quickly hefts her up onto her mattress with his single hand, scooping her off of the floor by her ass. Tenten yelps, then laughs again as Sasuke slides in between her legs, slotting his thighs under hers and pressing his hips up against her.

“Just stay like this,” he murmurs as he reaches down to swipe his thumb over her breast, before cupping it lightly in his palm. When her nipple grows hard, he leans down and covers the other with his mouth, sucking at it lightly and scraping the underside of it with his teeth.

“Oh, hell.” Tenten writhes under his touch, new warmth growing in the pit of her stomach. She fists her hand in his hair, holding his mouth to her. “Are you aiming for a second round already?” she teases.

Sasuke rubs his hardening cock against her leg as his hand travels down to her waist. “You’ll come first this time,” he promises, as he hefts her up further onto his thighs.
And to his credit, he’s right.
.
.
.
They lay on top of her sheets in the aftermath, the summer heat way too dense for them to actually get under the covers. It’s easier cleaning, though, Tenten muses, even as she grimaces to think of the terrible things they’ve just done to her summer comforter.

Sasuke is lying beside her, his eyes closed like he’s asleep, though his breathing is too measured for him to actually be. He rests like a mountain, as large and imposing as he is still. She takes advantage of that stillness and rolls over, running her hand through his thick, feathered hair, over the soft curve of his cheek.

Sasuke cracks open one severe eye the second her skin meets him. He watches her carefully, the way a keen-eyed hawk locks onto a mouse it’s about to snatch.

Tenten snorts. “Glad you condescended to stop by for a visit,” she says. It feels like all she’s done since he’s arrived is greet him, to little or no answer. She rests her head on his shoulder and places a peck on his cheek, assuming that’s a boundary she can cross now, given that his cum is still drying between her thighs. “Gotta say, this isn’t how I was expecting my afternoon would go.”

She punches his arm playfully to punctuate this, but the burning look he fixes her with is anything but playful. He grabs her wrist and tugs her closer, guiding her over top of him to rest, slotting her leg between his own.

“Gimme a moment,” she gripes, though she settles where he’s moved her, despite the heat generated by their bodies. “You just get back?” she asks. She pokes him roughly just below his jaw when he doesn’t answer. “You’re supposed to carry your weight in conversations too, you know. This isn’t a one woman show.”

He scrunches his nose primly. “I got in about an hour ago.”

“Yeah?” Predictably, that goes straight to her ego. “Missed me that bad, huh?”

Sasuke only snorts.

“I do have work I need to be getting to, though,” she says, rising on one elbow. “Are you, uh—were you planning to stay?” she asks as she rolls over to the edge of the bed, her sheets a lost cause.

The look Sasuke gives her is so emotionally constipated that it makes her stomach ache. Tenten raises her hands defensively. “Not that I’m trying to rush you or anything,” she adds. “I just—you know. Wanna get a sense of how productive I’m gonna be this afternoon.”

“Not long today,” Sasuke says as he sits up as well, running one hand through his thick, sweat-soaked hair. “I’ll be in the village for a while, though. Couple days.”

“Huh.” A couple days isn’t what she’d call a while, but maybe for Sasuke, it is. “Sounds good.”

Sasuke rises from the bed and starts gathering his clothes, giving her the perfect opportunity to ogle him a little each time he bends over. It’s hard to tell from just the brief encounter they had before, but he looks a little darker, more tan. It makes her wonder where he’s been since he left, and what he’s been doing.

She leans down to gather her own clothes but tosses them immediately into her hamper. “I’m probably going to take a quick shower first, just so you know.”

Sasuke raises one dark, fine eyebrow.

Against her better judgment, Tenten adds, “You’re welcome to join, if you want.”

Predictably, this leads to her being sandwiched between Sasuke and her shower wall, her cheek pressed against the cold tile as he fucks up into her. The hot water runs out before they finish, and she ends up on her back in the tub with Sasuke’s mouth sealed against her cunt, his tongue so hot against her clit that it sends shivers through her body even as the freezing water falls on them both.

“No more,” she pants, as he sits back on his heels and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

He responds with a far too satisfied smirk on his face that, unfortunately, is entirely deserved.

“I do have work that I need to finish, though,” she complains afterward, smacking his ass with her towel as she drip-dries. “I hope you know you’re terrible for business.”

“You can always say no,” Sasuke replies. His lips curdle slightly, as if he were genuinely confused.

Tenten snorts as she knots her towel around herself. “Well, let’s not get too hasty.”

They spend the next hour painting the rest of her furniture, moving back what’s already finished drying, and sanding down what she’ll just have to get to tomorrow, now that she’s already lost several hours of productivity today.

“That’s the trouble with living where you work, though,” she tells Sasuke as she blows wood shavings off the top of a table and rubs her hands together. “The work is always there, so you find yourself doing it at all these weird hours.”

“It looks nice,” he responds, lamely.

He’s such a terrible conversation partner that it’s almost painful, but she lets him get away with it, in part because he did the lion’s share of work moving around her other tables, but mostly because he looks cute sitting cross-legged on the floor of her shop, looking as clueless as he is gorgeous. “Looks better than before,” he adds, unbidden.

“Oh, so you had a problem with it before?” she teases.

Sasuke’s brow creases, as if he’s still uncertain their levity even after she’s ridden his face and grabbed his balls in the middle of him fucking her within an inch of her life.

“Seems like you couldn’t have hated it too much, if you were so eager to get back,” she adds.

Sasuke’s expression softens, though just barely so. It makes her wonder, almost randomly, what his mother looked like—whether his plump lips and high, almost feminine cheek bones were inherited from her, or if his entire family was just as gorgeous.

“We should spar some time,” Tenten says. “If you’re gonna be around for a while, I’d like to see if you can really wield those swords the way you pretend you can.”

He arches an eyebrow, but seems more amused than anything.

“Or next time, if you’re spoken for these next couple of days,” she continues.

Sasuke slips his hand inside his cloak and turns away, looking out towards the window. “I have a few people I need to see, sooner rather than later,” he says vaguely. “But I’ll be around.”

Tenten feels a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Then it’s a date.”

Chapter Text

The next day, Tenten is finalizing her first sale when the hawk shows up.

Or rather, she’s really really close to it. “You hold it like this,” she says, firming up her grip at the base of the morningstar. Taking a careful step back, she swings the spiked ball over her head a few times to demonstrate but cuts herself short before the momentum can start to build. “You try it.”

The chunin takes the handle warily, wrist dipping when she releases her grip. He raises it hesitantly, his arm clearly unable to comfortably support its weight. “Just like that?”

“Yep!” Tenten tries to keep her smile steady as the chunin attempts several haphazard swings with the weapon. He gets it over his head but barely manages to avoid decapitating himself. “Just… make sure you’re maintaining control over it.”

“Like this?” he asks, eyes wide, as he starts swinging the chain even harder.

“It’s…” Is she supposed to be entirely honest here? “It’s a start!” The chunin’s face falls, and so she hastily adds, “But that’s exactly why having your own is such a benefit! You can get the practice you need to get comfortable with balancing the weight.”

“Uh huh.” His eyes are bug-like, the morningstar still whirling over his head, whooshing loudly every time it circles. “I think I might need some help.”

She’s in the process of extracting the morningstar from his grip when she notices, right out of the corner of her eye, a hawk at her open window. When she does a double take, unsure if she’d seen correctly, she accidentally makes eye contact with it.

The bird quirks its head in response, as if posing some question to her.

Tenten rolls her eyes and turns back to saving her customer. The morningstar is a nonstarter, but she is able to convince him to buy a new whetstone and oil for his other weapons, either because she’s such a good saleswoman, or because he’s hoping to bribe her into never mentioning this incident again.

Either way, he’s more than happy to pay and be on his way, nearly tripping over his feet as he stumbles out the door. It fills her with an unexpectedly good feeling, the type she’s used to from mastering a new weapon or fighting style.

In a way, she supposes that’s more or less what this business is now: a new craft she’s just learning.

She’s humming to herself while she marks down the sale in her ledger when she catches sight of the hawk again, gazing at her with almost murderous intensity.

“I can’t imagine where you learned to be so patient,” she teases, as she walks over, leaning against the sill. “You’re one of Sasuke’s, I’m guessing.”

While Tenten is far from a bird expert, she’d say the look the dry expression the bird gives her in response is meant to be condescending. Definitely one of Sasuke’s, then.

“Well?” she asks, angling her head inside. “Are you here to visit?”

A quick jerk of its head to the side. No.

She checks its ankles. “Well, you don’t have any notes with you…”

Without any further waiting, the hawk quickly turns around and takes flight, circling once over her shop before hopping onto her neighbor’s house.

Tenten curses under her breath as the bird flies away. “I have things to do!” she calls after the bird, though obviously, this doesn’t do anything except make her neighbors give her weird looks. “I just opened up!”

Her temple throbs. “Too lazy to come and get me yourself, huh?” The bird is obviously a summons, because it has the wherewithal to look back at her cockily before turning its head and taking flight again.

“Ok, fine,” she mutters.

As loath as she is to leave her store after her first and only sale, she hasn’t exactly had customers barging through her doors either. With a sigh, Tenten turns and locks her door before taking off after the bird, down the road through her neighborhood.

While she’d expected that the bird would lead her to the training ground where she’d initially seen her, it takes her further past that, towards training ground 34.

“This his idea?” she calls out to the bird, who ignores her. If it is, she’s hardly complaining.

Out of all the training grounds, 34 is one that’s always been a favorite of hers, since it’s one of the few training grounds with an actual waterfall and plenty of shade during the hot summer months. It’s a poor place for sparring, but great for target practice, and even better for swimming.

In short, it’s great for all the things she likes best, and terrible for anything else Team Gai might have wanted to use it for.

The trees thin as she runs behind the bird, and eventually she’s able to hear the low rumble of water in the distance. Tenten grins, her irritation mostly gone.

At the very least, Sasuke is a man of fine taste.

Finally, the hawk flies into a tall, leafy tree and perches there, fluffing its feathers and settling into a comfortable ball of fluff. The mist from the waterfall touches her warm face, and the tall column of water finally comes into view.

As does Sasuke.

He’s standing with his back to her, shirtless, his hair wet and deflated. It hangs down near his shoulders, the ends slightly curled in the humidity. In true Sasuke fashion, he’s standing facing the sun, precariously close to the edge of one of the many jutting rocks arranged around the base of the waterfall.

He tilts his head back, letting the sun touch his bare neck and chest, the stump of his arm unbound and bare. It occurs to her then that, despite his outward stiffness and high-strung demeanor, Sasuke really does relax, and he likes to make a big production of it when he does.

“Having fun up there?”

He doesn’t respond immediately. Likely, he sensed her coming a while ago and has just been biding his time.

Tenten giggles in excitement, feeling like a young kid again, as she kicks her sandals off and steps into the water, a pleasant chill going through her as her feet touch the cool rock beneath it. She sighs in contentment, the heat ebbing from her body as she wades in closer to him.

“Still in town, huh?”

Sasuke tilts his head back slightly, one sliver of an eye peeking out, snakelike, at her. He grunts and turns back to face the sun. “For now.”

“Well, alright.” The stone he’s standing on is fairly large, enough so that she’s able to paw her way up the side with a little chakra to stand behind him, admiring the view. “Got my first customer today,” she says, unable to keep the pride from her voice. “Feels like I’m on my way to becoming a successful businesswoman.”

Another grunt, which she supposes is his way of telling her to continue.

“I never really thought of myself as a people kind of person, but once I had the morningstar in my hands, it all came naturally. After that, I was almost surprised by how much I had to say.”

He snorts. “That was a surprise to you?”

If they were in the water, she’d splash him in the face. Instead, she rolls with the jab. “Sure was.”

The spray from the water is starting to wet her hair. She runs her fingers through the tied back strands, slicking them down to her forehead. “Nice day to be out here,” she says, as she sits down next to where Sasuke is standing. “Didn’t realize how badly I needed a cool down and some fresh air.”

Sasuke’s fairly tall for a man, which means in this instance that he provides some much needed shade. Still, the stone is warm where her bare legs touch it, still half-wet from wading through the water.

“You get your business taken care of?” she asks. He shrugs, which she interprets to mean almost.

Sensing that his capacity for conversation has been exhausted, Tenten closes her eyes and, like she’d seen Sasuke do, tilts her head back, basking in the sunshine, and the rhythmic sound of the water crashing down.

It’s not often that Tenten goes out of her way to relax. Her days aren’t particularly stressful when she’s not on missions, and even now that the shop is open, the majority of her responsibilities are still self-imposed ones, subject only to her own timeline.

All that being said, though, she isn’t the type to sit around doing nothing. She isn’t necessarily high strung, the way some jonin tend to be, and she’s never been consumed by the desire to train and improve the way Lee is, but she finds it equally hard to sit still for too long, without some kind of goal in mind.

Really, like almost everything she does, she likes to think she does out of genuine enjoyment. She enjoys her work so much that things like this - taking breaks, going out of her way to sit still for a few seconds and enjoy the world around her - don’t happen often, because she’s happy just doing the things she does.

“You… were Lee’s teammate, right?”

The question comes out of nowhere, and when Tenten opens her eyes, she finds Sasuke staring down at her, expression guarded. Had he read her mind somehow? Or was it just written on her face?

“Still am,” she says. After a moment, with an odd sense of guilt at his exclusion, she adds, “And Neji’s.”

Even though it slips it, even just saying it feels like she’s made some kind of a choice. Tenten shifts, crossing one leg over the other.

Is today the kind of day where she wants to get into it? What used to be an everyday occurrence has become less so. The weight of her memories has started to become a little less forceful lately—without the constant rush of emotions, what used to be like a waterfall has become more ambient, something she can wade through rather than drown in.

It’s only recently that the sudden, often random pangs of loss have started to feel like requests. Reminders, maybe, but ones she can refuse, or at least delay for a while.

With a sigh, Tenten turns her face up to the sun, her eyes drawn to the faded rainbows drawn out of the waterfall’s spray. It’s almost too beautiful of a day to spend it grieving.

She’s about to open her mouth, words half-formed on her tongue, when Sasuke speaks up. “Do you still see him? Lee, that is.”

She huffs a laugh. Of course he means Lee. “I doubt I could get away from him if I tried.” Permanently, at least. Recently, he’s been chasing down recommendations for a jonin promotion and has been scarce. “Not as much lately.”

Something about Sasuke’s face, however, makes it seem like he was looking for something different. Or, at least, like he doesn’t know what he’s looking for and is trying to feel it out.

Slowly, he says, “Lee… has a very strong personality.”

This time, her laugh is more like a bark. “So now you want to be diplomatic?”

The corner of his mouth perks up, a half measure that feels like a full one where Sasuke is concerned.

She tucks her hands behind her, leaning back into the stone and rocking one leg over the side of it. “Did you run into Lee or something? He’s been everywhere lately.”

“Ah, no. It—you don’t mention him often.” He takes a thoughtful pause. “It seems that every time I’m in town, you’re by yourself.”

Is he scoping out the competition? Tenten stifles a laugh. “We still do missions together sometimes. It’s just been harder since the war, with Gai-sensei and all...”

“Oh. Right.” It’s clipped and, if it’d been anyone else, she’d almost assume he was embarrassed by it.

“Teams are…” What she’s about to say almost sounds stupid, but she says it anyway. “They’re a lot like how families work, I think. You can spend a lot of time apart but still be together at the end.”

Now it’s her turn to be thoughtful. “We—I guess it matters more to us than it does to some others. I know a lot of teams that go their own ways when people start getting jonin promotions or specializing into other things, but that’s never been an issue for us, even if we aren’t running missions together.”

Sasuke nods slowly. “Our teams are a little different,” he muses.

It would feel rude to snort this time, though she can’t help but think it’s the greatest understatement she’s ever heard. “I think you’re right about that.” She hides her smile by looking down into the water below. The white froth bubbles along the base of the stone, forming mini whirlpools.

She continues, “I think Naruto and Sakura would fight their way through every village on the continent if they had to. Not that—I care for Lee, obviously, but—but you know. We’re different people.”

Sasuke stiffens at that, hands clenching at his sides. “Yeah.” Slowly, like a coiled snake, he relaxes again as he realizes she isn’t pushing the issue. “You are.”

She crinkles her nose. “Unless you disagree.”

With a puff of a laugh, his shoulders ease. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“That’s what I thought.” With that, they lapse into silence, save for the rushing water and light rustle of wind through the trees.

She can’t entirely tell if he’s working towards something he actually wants to talk about, since he was the one who changed the topic in the first place but immediately clammed up when she tried to probe it deeper.

After a moment, Sasuke clears his throat. “I wonder, at times, what other teams are like. How they function.”

“Yeah?”

“Sometimes—sometimes it feels as though the team I was assigned was just—is just different by every possible measure, and it makes me wonder how things might have been different if that had been different.”

“Yeah.” She lets it sit a moment, since it feels like he’s testing the waters for himself. It’s hard not to be curious about the constant whirlwind of drama around him, but there isn’t any rush to figure it out, either. “Do you wish it was?”

“I mean—” He seems taken aback by that. “No, it isn’t about that.”

“Alright.”

“And you… Neji Hyuuga was your teammate.”

Ugh. Now it’s her turn to fumble. “Yeah, he was.”

Sasuke stares at her, but he doesn’t say anything. A silence falls between them.

Again, she finds herself staring down into the rushing water, wondering where it all comes from, and where it all goes. Konoha is almost straight in the middle of the continent, though lakes and rivers like this one criss-cross all over the country.

It’s easy to take things like that for granted, she supposes. The water comes, and the water goes, and she never has to think too hard about it, because it does what it’s going to do whether she thinks about it or not.

“Were you…” Sasuke trails off. “You—you and Neji. Were the two of you—”

“Uh…” The sudden panic in her voice seems to echo in her mind. “No. Nope. Nothing like that.”

Suddenly, she’s full of energy. She scrambles to her feet and turns away from him, pretending to stretch. “Really great weather today,” she says, like an idiot.

This time, it feels like Sasuke has made the decision for her—today’s just gonna be one of those days where she thinks about Neji.

She rubs her hands together, wishing for chalk or something she could twirl or twist between her fingers. “You come here to train?” she asks, finally turning back to him.

Sasuke’s brow furrows, confused by the sudden change of topic. He’s clever enough to get it, though, because he shrugs. They feel like near strangers again, whatever intimacy the prior conversation had created going numb.

“There’s probably some targets set up around here…” She looks over at the forest and shields her eyes as with one hand she searches out a good spot to do some target practice. “Probably could rig up a few if we need to.”

That was one of the few good things about Team Gai—Gai-sensei encouraged eccentric but collaborative types of competition, which meant that, after he’d run them into the dirt in practice, they could usually finish up with something less physically intense like target practice.

It’d done a lot of good for her and—and the rest of her team.

“Let’s try—” Just as she turns to talk to Sasuke, her foothold on the rock slips. Before she can catch herself with chakra, there’s—there’s nothing.

The world spins, and air rushes past her face, like a soft, sun-warmed cloth.

Then pain.

Water rushes over her face, up her nose, choking her. “Shit!” She struggles into a sitting position, head pounding, and starts coughing up everything she swallowed by accident. Shit shit shit shit shit.

“Awe, man…”

She looks up to find Sasuke staring down at her, a worried expression on his face.

“Sorry!” She grits her teeth as she rubs the back of her head harder, feeling like the largest idiot in the world. She’s almost up to her shoulders in water, and the current is none too gentle.

“Are you okay…?”

“Haha…” Her entire body burns hot with shame despite the cool water. “Guess I slipped there.”

Sasuke jumps down beside her, landing gracefully next to her. “You hit your head,” he says. “Don’t move.”

Her face flushes to an impossibly dark color as he bends over and lifts her out of the water, supporting her entire weight with his single arm. He tucks her in closely and walks to shore, where he sets her down against a tree.

The sunlight behind him is suddenly so blindingly bright that it makes her eyes hurt and her head throb. “Ugh,” she says again, as she covers her eyes with her hand. There are only so many different ways she can call herself a fucking idiot. “I really got myself good there…”

“Hold still.” Sasuke’s hand moves around the back of her head, his thumb pressing against her temple. “There’s a little blood.”

“It’s fine. I’m really sorry,” she blurts out. “Dumb… genin moment… I just—” She brushes his hand away and slicks back her wet hair. “Wasn’t paying great attention. A new low for me.”

Sasuke smiles, close-lipped. His face is beautiful enough that she could easily forget an open head wound. “I don’t know any medical ninjutsu,” he says, almost apologetically, though inwardly she’s flooded with relief.

Gotta run. Leave. Find a hole to die in. She laughs nervously. “Yeah, me either…” She crinkles her nose. “Too much time on the sidelines. Or, frontlines, I mean.” A pause. “Well, most of the time I’m on the frontlines, at least…”

Sasuke stares at her. Her vision stills long enough for her to decide that he looks confused. Is she talking nonsense?

She feels around her temple, feeling the tender spot on the back of her head where she fell. “I… I think I should get this checked out. A concussion would really suck.”

His lips press together. “Yeah.”

“Well…” She tilts her head. The inside of her skull seems to slush around with each movement like a cracked teapot. “Later, maybe?”

He raises one thin, dark eyebrow. “Later…?”

Her face flushes. “You know…” The look on his face indicates that no, he does not know. “Dinner…? Or something…”

His lips thin, then perk up. “That should be fine.” He nods. “Dinner, or something.”

“Hehe…” Tenten rises slowly, using the tree behind her to steady herself. She’s a little dizzy, but mobile, at least, which is all that matters. Right now, her only priority is escaping with as much of her dignity intact as she can manage. “It shouldn’t be long, so—you know… Whenever.”

“Ah…” Sasuke’s brow creases with concern as she takes an initial, tottering step aside. “Are you sure that—”

“Great! See you then!” Tenten sets her hands on her hips, forcing a brilliant smile. She immediately turns to leave.

Stars form in the corners of her vision as she whirls around. It takes extra effort to force her body to move normally, but she at least manages it. It comes out as a gangly, waddling sort of gait, but the only fuzzy, frenzied thought she can muster is that she needs to get out of this humiliating clusterfuck as soon as possible.
.
.
.
It’s a slow walk back to the village proper, though by the time she gets there, her vision has cleared a little, and the bleeding from her head seems to have subsided.

She’s almost tempted to turn around and try to salvage some of her damaged pride when she hears a lot hoot behind her.

“Tenten! Teeeeeenten!”

She barely has time to murmur, “Oh, fuck,” before she’s surrounded in a tornado of dust.

Her sensei starts talking, faster than her aching brain can follow. “My dear Tenten! My student! You’ve been injured! What a great fight you must have been fighting!”

She lets out a choked, “I’m kinda busy right now, Gai-sensei,” that gets lost in the midst of her sensei’s animated chattering.

“You’re bleeding! Were you wounded in honorable combat?”

“I fell.” She rubs her head, feeling dried blood flake away. “I just bumped my head, is all.” She pauses a moment, then adds, “I was, uh, doing some target practice.”

His eyes go wide, and his posture turns ramrod straight in his chair. “Gah—a head wound?! Then there is no time to waste! We must take you to the hospital at once!”

“No, really, it’s—” The words barely leave her mouth before she’s thrown over her sensei’s shoulder like a ragdoll.

Seconds later, his wheelchair is bumping and bustling down the dusty road, kicking up a cloud in its wake.

Tenten is stuck doing a dozen things at once—clinging onto him for dear life, trying to wrestle her way out of his grasp… burying her face in the hope that somehow no one will recognize her.

Part of her starts to hope that she’ll pass out and be spared the experience entirely.

“Sensei…” Each rocking turn makes her head pound. She bangs her fists on the back of his chair. “You’re making it worse!”

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. How is it that one moment of weakness can compound into a hundred extra punishments?

Gai-sensei brakes abruptly in front of the hospital, the wheelchair skidding into a cloud of dirt. Tenten coughs and slides off the back of his chair with a few, stumbling steps towards the entrance, her head swimming.

She then promptly pukes directly in the hospital entryway.

“Aha!” Gai-sensei shakes his head. “Almost certainly a concussion.”

“If I didn’t have one before, I definitely do now…” Tenten looks up to find a stunned receptionist staring at her through the glass doors, eyes wide. She holds up a hand. “Sorry about that.”

She waddles to sit down in the waiting area while Gai-sensei checks her in. It’s the least he can do after all that trouble.

It’s not like he hasn’t done it before, either; her sensei has taken her to the hospital more times than she can count, for all manner of scrapes, cuts, and colds she’s suffered through since becoming one of his genin.

With another groan, she drops her head into her hands, rubbing her sore eyes and praying that no one she knows just saw her spill her guts like a green genin.

Just as she’s trying to recenter herself, though, a loud bark cuts through the general hum of hospital activity.

“One of you has to help me! You can’t all just ignore me ‘cause of her!”

Tenten’s eyes almost roll back into her head. What the hell is this about? She looks up, eyes heavy, as a man in a green chunin vest runs from nurse to nurse, only to be shrugged off by each.

A man seated a few seats down holding an ice pack to his neck scoffs at her confused look. “Don’t mind him. Guy’s been here all morning. Broken wrist or something. None of the mednin will see him.”

Tenten’s first thought is, uncharitably, Have you been waiting all morning too?

“He seems apologetic enough,” she remarks. Still, it’s not an uncommon punishment, and mednin are notoriously unforgiving.

Mednin will turn away shinobi for any number of things—for not listening to them, not staying out of trouble. Idiots, who try to push them around or bully them. It usually isn’t a long-term solution, though. Even a mednin knows better than to leave a shinobi with an untreated wound or injury. “What’d he do?”

The man snorts. “Got on the wrong side of the boss lady.”

Tenten frowns. “The…?” The head nurse? The chief mednin? With her opening her business lately, it’s been a short while since she’s needed any healing, and she isn’t even entirely sure who is running the hospital anymore. Lady Tsunade?

She’s curious, but too embarrassed to ask.

The man shakes his head, a ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Quite the temper she has.”

Before Tenten can learn anything else, Gai-sensei is back at her side, turning her head this way and that, clucking about concussions and spinal injuries like she’s never set foot in a hospital before. She can’t tell if it’s his own injury making him more sensitive, or his lack of work making him restless.

With a grim expression, her sensei sets his hands on her shoulders and says, solemnly, “I promise you that it’s all going to be okay in the end, Tenten, regardless of what they say.”

She growls at him and bats his hands away. “Stop making such a big deal out of it, sensei! It’s just—”

“It’s just a possible concussion,” another voice chimes in.

Tenten glances up to find Sakura looking down at her, clipboard in hand, with a fairly unamused expression on her face. “You should know better than to underestimate a head injury,” Sakura says sternly, punctuated by a wagging finger.

Tenten lets out a nervous laugh as her face grows hot. Just another thing to be embarrassed about today… “I just don’t think it warrants all the theatrics, is all…”

At that, Sakura cracks a smile. “Even so, there’s no reason to take chances with it. I have a few minutes, so I’ll give you a quick look over.”

“I’d appreciate that…” With a groan, Tenten picks herself up from her chair and immediately hunches over as another bolt of pain strikes her temple. “Dammit.”

Sakura clicks her tongue unforgivingly as Tenten shuffles over. “Not a big deal, huh?”

“What excellent timing you have, Sakura!” Gai-sensei chimes in, turning his wheelchair as if he were going to follow them.

“Don’t you dare!” Tenten snaps at him, like he’s a dog about to pee on her leg. She points at the spot she vacated. “You’re staying here until I’m done.” With that, she turns on her heel, intentionally not looking back at his puppy eyes or droopy lips. “The nerve of that guy…” she grumbles.

“We’ll be quick!” Sakura promises him, before turning and leading Tenten back towards the examination rooms.

“Thought you’d be too busy for the little cases,” Tenten comments.

“It’s been slow.” Sakura gives her a cheeky smile. “I saw your name on the intake and thought I’d take the file. One of the perks of being in charge.”

Tenten snorts. There’s one question answered. “I bet. Are you running most of the hospital stuff now?”

“A lot of it, at least.” Sakura stops outside an examination room and points to a scale outside. “Height, weight—you know the drill.”

“Oh, don’t I know it.”

Sakura jots down her measurements as they talk. “Lady Tsunade and Shizune want everything to be in place so they can leave as soon as possible. That means Shizune is passing a lot onto me now, and I’ve been getting a feel for things as I go.”

“Sounds like they’ve been keeping you busy.”

“Shizune has been good to me.” Sakura takes down a few more notes and ushers Tenten to take a seat in the examination room. “Hold still just for a second,” Sakura says, before placing her hands on the sides of Tenten’s head, feeling from her temples down to her jaw.

A cool, prickling sensation follows in her wake as the cut on the back of her head stitches itself up. Gradually, Tenten’s head clears, and she draws in a long, chest-deep breath as Sakura’s healing chakra gets to work.

“That stuff is like magic,” Tenten murmurs.

Sakura laughs. “You got lucky. Nothing too bad so far.”

“That’s good.”

“Training accident?”

“Ah…” She contemplates going through the whole story but decides to let it be. No need to advertise how big of an idiot she is. “Yeah. A pretty stupid one.”

Sakura raises an eyebrow. “You’d be surprised by the type of stuff that comes through here. I feel like I’ve seen it all by this point.”

“And I’m sure Team Gai has contributed to that…”

Sakura barely suppresses a laugh. “Lee… has certainly found some creative ways to get hurt. I’m pretty sure he’s on a first name basis with every nurse here.” She pulls her hands away then rubs them together, as if warming them. “You did have a laceration, which I’ve closed, and some bruising and swelling, but nothing I’m concerned about internally.”

It’s about what she expected, but Tenten lets out a sigh of relief anyway. “Thank goodness. That’s what I was hoping to hear.”

“You’ll want to wash out your hair, though, and the back of your shirt. If you want—”

Before Sakura can finish, there’s a knock at the door. “Ma’am?” a timid voice asks. “He’s still here…”

Sakura’s face almost immediately turns stony, her friendliness snuffed out. “And I doubt he’s learned a thing.”

The nurse on the other side of the door hesitates, until Sakura sighs. “I don’t mean to put you all in the middle of this… Go ahead and have a med-nin set the bone and send him off.”

“Yes, Lady.”

As the nurse’s footsteps fade away, Tenten gives Sakura a curious look.

“A chunin,” Sakura says, with a wrinkle of her nose. “He came in a few days ago with a stomach problem, and—and he said some insensitive things.”

“Geez.” That certainly explained the man in the lobby, though. While most of the shinobi should know much better by now, Tenten’s sure Sakura hears plenty of nasty things from people intimidated by her age. “So what happened to him?”

Sakura laughs nervously and tugs at her hair, looking sheepish. “Well… I may have broken his arm a little.”

Tenten barks out a laugh, which grows the more embarrassed Sakura looks. “That’ll teach him an important lesson,” she says confidently. “He’ll think twice before underestimating the next young kunoichi he runs into.”

At this, Sakura’s eyes drop. “Well… I probably could’ve handled things better.”

“Err…" Had she said something insensitive? Was that the concussion talking? “Sorry if that was a little insensitive… It’s just nice when someone stands up to guys who think they can talk like that to a fellow shinobi, just because they happen to be younger or a woman.”

“Yeah…” Sakura fidgets, making Tenten think it’s not just the head injury.

“I’m running my mouth, aren’t I?”

“No, no… It’s not quite that.” Sakura hesitates for a moment, then sighs. “Sorry… That wasn’t really what he said.”

In a show of forced nonchalance, Sakura leans back against the desk behind her, though she fusses with one of the buttons on her white coat as she does.

“Last night, Naruto, Sasuke, and I had plans after my shift, and that guy—he had a lot to say when he saw us leaving, to Sasuke specifically. He got really nasty about it, but Sasuke wasn’t speaking up, and I just—someone had to say something, you know? The things that guy was saying were just plain wrong. He didn’t know anything about what happened to Sasuke, or what he’d been through, and he just made judgments based off of things he had heard from other people.”

Sakura pauses, and it takes several long seconds for Tenten to finally say, “Oh.”

“So—you know. He wouldn’t leave Sasuke alone, so—yeah. I stopped him.” She blushes, her cheeks turning a soft pink. “When the word got out about what happened, none of the nurses wanted to treat him, since I’m… you know.”

“Yeah.” That’s very, very different from what Tenten had imagined. She struggles to think of an appropriate thing to say in response. “Crazy.”

“I didn’t ask anyone to do it!” Sakura says quickly, holding up her hands defensively. “I didn’t say anything at all, word just got around fast.”

“Yeah…”

“And so—and Sasuke… he has so few friends. It’s really not fair to him, because he—he doesn’t like to argue. He won’t speak up for himself, even when they get in his face like that.” Sakura worries her lip, deliberating for a second before she says, “And I worry he lets it happen because he thinks he deserves it.”

“Well…” Tenten still feels like she hasn’t properly processed this conversation. “He’s a pretty tough guy, isn’t he? Seems like he’s got pretty thick skin.”

“That’s what everyone thinks,” Sakura says, frowning. It’s clear she disagrees, but she doesn’t push the issue. “Anyway… so that’s that whole situation.” She pauses, then waves her hand towards a nearby cabinet. “I have some peroxide if you want to soak your shirt. Wouldn’t want that stain to set.”

Beyond grateful for the sudden shift in topic, Tenten immediately perks up. “Yes! Great idea.” Her enthusiasm is a little too much, but the relief propels her forward. “I was just thinking that.”

Sakura offers a thin smile as she starts to fish in her cabinets. “That material is good, but blood can be a pain to get out of white fabric.”

“Don’t I know it.” Tenten unbuttons her shirt until she’s just in a bra and camisole. She holds the shirt up, seeing a reddish stain on the collar where she’d bled. “Not as bad as I thought it would be, thankfully.”

Sakura raises a thin eyebrow at her. “Something you want to tell me?”

“Uh…” Somehow, the question seems like a trap. “But I’ll still follow proper rest protocol when I leave?”

Her friend laughs, then shakes her head. “Your neck?”

“My neck…” Tenten’s hand comes up. Her fingers brush over a tender spot, right around the bite mark Sasuke had left there only a day or two ago. Her face immediately flushes, and she briefly imagines bludgeoning Sasuke for leaving such an obnoxious mark behind.

Sakura looks more amused than anything else. “It’s ok, it isn’t the worst I’ve seen by far, though…” She gives it an appraising glance as she walks over and pokes at it with a gloved finger. “Looks like you’ve cleaned it well, but I should still heal it.” There’s a mischievous pause. “Unless you’d prefer to keep it…?”

Tenten’s face is absolutely scarlet now. She turns away, cheeks burning. “Please get rid of it.”

Sakura’s chakra touches her shoulder, wiping the mark away in seconds. When Tenten turns to look, Sakura prompts her. “So…?”

Tenten grimaces. “Yeah…”

Sakura snickers. “It’s ok if you don’t want to talk about it, I just didn’t know you were seeing anyone. Usually that kind of news makes its way around town pretty quick.”

“Oh.” Internally, Tenten suppresses a groan. If Sakura doesn’t know, that means Sasuke hasn’t mentioned it to her. If he hasn’t mentioned it to her yet… Ugh.

Tenten isn’t particularly in the secret keeping business, especially when it comes to men. And yet, it doesn’t feel like her news to share, if it’s really news at all.

It would be news, she reasons, if it was serious, but it doesn’t particularly feel serious, either.

“It’s…” What she isn’t going to do, however, is lie. “It’s mostly casual right now. Too soon to say if it’s really something that’s going anywhere.”

Sakura nods sympathetically. “I understand.”

“Yeah…” Tenten dabs at her shirt, watching the pink stain dissipate.

It isn’t her place to interfere in whatever is going on between Sasuke and Sakura, but Sakura obviously cares about him, and if there’s one thing Tenten will not do, it’s get into a tug of war over a man. She doesn’t like secrets or lying, and she certainly doesn’t like the thought of whatever she’s doing with Sasuke bringing drama into her peaceful life.

She manages to leave without saying anything else of substance. Her sensei is still waiting for her in the lobby, though, sitting ramrod straight in his chair.

“You’re gonna hurt your back doing that,” she chides him. She cracks her neck, feeling a little sore where she’d been healed. “C’mon, old man. Let’s go get lunch.”