Chapter Text
xXx
With peace comes chances for new opportunities, or the reemergence of old ones. The first year after the war flew by on hyperspeed, but now that they were coming up on the second-year anniversary. Most people were more settled into the peaceful times, and they could spare the time to think about frivolous things.
Kakashi doesn’t remember signing off on it, but he went through about three hundred pieces of paper a day and he couldn’t be bothered to remember most of them. It’s about three months after he signed his name on some random document when he’s asked for a meeting to discuss his ‘generous donation’. Apparently, the contest creators thought it would be wonderful for him to be a guest judge at the ‘How Well Do You Know Your Partner’ event. It would run over the first three days of the festival created to celebrate the end of the war and beginning of peace among five nations. They named it The Festival of Bonds, and he had to stop himself at least fourteen separate times from making a dirty joke about the title.
It was low hanging fruit.
Still, it would be unfair for him to be a guest judge, first and foremost because he couldn’t be bothered and would half-ass it. Secondly, because he planned to spend the time with his husband. It’s the one week a year when all he’s expected to do is say a quick speech and then disappear into the large crowd and be a normal citizen. He was not about to give that up to watch lovesick idiots swoon and make fools of each other. Third, and most importantly, if he participated they were absolutely going to ask his husband to join him on the panel. Gai would very likely slip up gushing about their unbreakable bond and reveal how he and Kakashi had disguised themselves and won one of the last ones.
In his defence, not that there was one, Gai had technically asked Sukea. He knew all along it was Kakashi, but that was a story for another day, and insisted that he disguise himself so people didn’t know it was him. One wig and half-henge later, they flew through the competition and won the grand prize, which was not that great back then given the funding for frivolous things was low.
Still, they got a nice three-day stay at a hotel and a few dinner vouchers out of it. Kakashi admitted the first night who he was, heart in his throat and palms clammy with sweat, and Gai patted his hand in a way that would be condescending if it were anyone else but Maito Gai. He said that was why he disguised himself as well. He didn’t want anyone to think he was ‘pursuing’ other men that were not his rival. He loved him in every facet, and he could understand why Kakashi would want to be someone else, if even for a little bit.
So, accounting for all of that, he did the only logical thing a man in his position would do.
He volunteered Sasuke.
xXx
“I should have burned this village to cinders.” Sasuke told him without a hint of humour in his tone when Kakashi explained to him that he was going to have to take his place on the panel of evaluators for the competition. Naruto would be out of the village for the first day of the celebrations due to ‘hokage-apprenticeship’ training. Otherwise, Kakashi would have volun-told him to do it. He’s not stupid enough to tell Sakura to do anything , and Sasuke…?
Sasuke was a glorified house-husband. In all technicalities his job title was ANBU Operative, but given the fact that they were at peace and no one had tried to murder him in the last sixteen months, ANBU had all but amalgamated into the village guards. Sasuke did his shifts twice a week, and then he went home and baked cookies or whatever it was that house-husbands did. Kakashi wouldn’t know. Gai was just as busy as him, so no one was at home all day looking after the house except for his ninken sometimes.
The joys of being married to the hokage and hailed as the local legend. Kakashi tried to talk him out of it, but that led down the path of heartfelt speeches involving the words ‘man of destiny’ and ‘eternal means through all space and time’. In the end, Kakashi just didn’t have the energy to argue with him. The only stipulation was that they got married before Kakashi took the hat and they only had their students there. It was a rushed event with very little time to get proper clothes fitted, but between the ten of them, Yamato and Sai included, they managed. Lee cried during the entirety of their vows, but Kakashi found it to be a personal victory in their rival’s score that he made Gai cry harder.
He was in the lead by two points.
“Wasn’t much to burn, back then.” Kakashi returned to reading the current plans for village restructuring.
The rokudaime picked up his pen and put a big strikethrough on a few spots, knowing just how much that would piss off the current head of urban development. The two of them had been at each other’s throats since the day he took the title, and it wasn’t about to end anytime soon. Kakashi came from a traumatic shinobi and orphan background, and the head of urban development was a civilian from the non-shinobi branch of the Tsubasa Clan, who had no idea what it was like to live on a meagre stipend. Still, he appreciated how passionate about the job Tsubasa-san was, and that he spoke his mind instead of the typical bureaucratic bullshit.
He was stuck behind a desk all day so he had to get his kicks in somewhere. If the biggest villain in his life was a middle-aged, balding, father of five annoying children, he’d count his blessings.
“What if I say no?” Sasuke challenged.
Kakashi raised a brow at him, calling his bluff. “What, you going to run away from the village in defiance, again? You do realise I’m your boss.”
Sasuke scoffed from behind his Hawk ANBU mask. “That means nothing to me, you and I both know this position is for show.”
“Fair.” Kakashi conceded and then gave his most troublesome student a disarming smile. “Then I just tattle on you to Naruto and Sakura.” Kakashi paused here for dramatic effect. “Just think of the disappointed look on their faces when you say you don’t want to participate in the festival that is honouring the dawn of a new era. The era that Naruto fought so hard for . You’d rather stay at home gardening or sewing or wood-carving or whatever solitary fixation you currently have.
“It’s crocheting, actually.” Sasuke corrected him with a long-suffering deep sigh, and then took off the mask and gave him a heterochromic glare. “I’m not about to be guilted into participating in this farce. What kind of idiots would willingly do something this embarrassing?”
xXx
“Please!”
“No.”
“ Please ?”
“No.”
“I beg of you! It is only one hour on each of the first three days of the festival! Three hours! Then we can experience for ourselves the World’s Greatest Curry!”
“Lee, it’s a marketing ploy. Anyone can say they have the world’s greatest curry.” Neji pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to reign in his frustration. Lee was stubborn, as equally stubborn as he was, and they had been arguing about this for the past week. It was a stone wall meeting an immovable force, and it was giving him a stress headache.
“How will we know if we have not tried it?” Lee countered; he was fired up passionately about this, fists clenched in front of him as if he was going to somehow subdue Neji to get him to participate. Either that, or he was about to launch into a heartfelt speech about enjoying their youth and strengthening their bond as friends and teammates.
“Ask Tenten.” Neji warily sank into a sparring stance, he could see where this was going.
“Tenten said no.” Lee took the cue and started the match with a roundhouse kick.
“Why are you accepting her ‘no’ and not mine?” Neji demanded, blocking the kick and retaliating with his own palm strike, cursing the third of their trio viciously in his head.
“She said you and I would have a better chance of winning!” Lee explained, meeting his teammate hit for hit.
Long past were the days when Neji would easily wipe the floor with him in order to get out of a conversation. At this point in their lives, they were completely equal so long as Lee didn’t pull out the gates. It was not needed, and considered cheating, unless Neji requested it for some special training he wanted to try. Lee won just as many of their sparring matches without them as the Hyuuga. Yes, he had been counting. So it had only been a matter of time before they settled this the old fashioned way; a no-holds-bar match.
“Lee, it’s a partners competition!” Neji tried to reason with him, but as per usual, it fell on deaf ears.
“Friends may participate! I asked! This way we can show everyone the strength of our-” He cut himself off to back-flip and avoid the trigram rotation. Neji waited until Lee was just close enough to think he’d land a hit. “-camaraderie. Besides, we have been partners on many missions!”
“That is not what they mean and you know it.” The long-haired teen accused, an edge to his voice. “Don’t play nieve; I know you’re smarter than that.”
“See! And that is why we should enter! You know me and I know you! I also know you want an excuse to get away so your uncle cannot arrange marriage candidates. There are many high-ranking clans coming into Konoha to participate in the festival. Two whole weeks! We could do so many things in two weeks! Hiking, canoeing, shopping, eating… They have a tea leaf farm that sells their own blends! And a pottery place! You can make your own cups and teapot! They are also famous for their designs!”
Neji would not give in to temptation so easily, but his teammate had really done his homework. He knew exactly how to entice him into thinking this was just some vacation where he could leisurely enjoy his stay with no repercussions. The only problem was that the other man didn’t view the competition as a spectacle wherein they’d have to horrifically embarrass themselves. What if they didn’t win? Lee would be devastated and think they needed to ‘bond’ more, or worse, think it was his fault and fall into some sort of depression about the state of their friendship.
Between the two options, Neji wasn’t sure which one would be worse.
The truth was he was more than happy to go to an onsen with Lee for two weeks. Even one that was a part of some high-end brand new resort-town on an island that boasted about its romantic scenery and activities for all types of interests. They were quite content in each other’s company, and if he’d just asked to go on a vacation, Neji would have agreed near-instantly.
No, he just wanted to humiliate him first.
Neji knew that Lee did not view him as a romantic interest, or if he did he hid so deep down that even he didn’t know it. That was entirely possible, given how clueless Lee could be in certain cases, but it didn’t bother him as much as it should have. Lee was his best friend, and he’d watched him pine over other people for years. He’d rather be what they were now than nothing at all; their relationship ruined because Neji vied for something unrealistic.
He didn’t care what his sensei or his stupid smug husband thought about it, either.
Still, If he did enter the competition with Lee, that could be seen as a reason for his uncle to back off with the whole ‘finding him a spouse’ tirade. He knew it came from a place of caring, and it had nothing to do with lineage or pedigree. He wanted the best for his nephew, and he was downright determined to find it. It probably originated from his desire to atone to his brother, satisfy his own boredom, spoil his nephew, or a combination of the three.
He was also in a bit of a strange not-competition with Maito Gai, wherein he understood that Gai was a huge and important part of his nephew’s life, but he disliked the father-son dynamic they had with each other. So this may also be his way of ‘one-upping’ him.
It was difficult to navigate, because he had learned to really rely on his sensei for all things one would normally turn to their parents for. All three of them had. When it came to his uncle, Neji always felt like the carpet was going to be ripped out from under his feet at any moment, and things would go back to the oppressive regime they had once been in his youth. Even without the previous seal on his forehead, he still half-expected the new one to go off randomly when someone from the head family wanted to put him in his place. That had happened a lot after his first chuunin exam, when he’d aired the Hyuuga clan’s dirty laundry for all to hear, but never while his uncle or cousins were around to witness it.
It was Gai who had insisted that he stay in the spare room of his two-bedroom jounin apartment and let him sleep off the severe, debilitating migraine each time. He went out to buy black-out drapes immediately and would force him to take small sips of water and ginger tea, put an ice pack at the back of his neck, and relocate a garbage can to Neji’s side in case he needed to vomit. No medication helped, but they’d tried nearly everything. To this day, he was pretty sure that Gai moved into a two-bedroom only a year into being their sensei just in case one of them needed to move in. He said it was for the spare exercise room, but work-out areas didn’t need a twin bed with turtles on the comforter.
His uncle was too busy to notice the first few dozen times Neji disappeared for a week or two. Eventually he realised that his nephew wasn’t staying in the Hyuuga compound when he did try to find him for training or tea. He unapologetically invaded his privacy by using the byakugan to find him, expecting something nefarious. Instead he watched while Neji calmly made himself some tea at his sensei’s apartment and settled in to read on the couch. Maito Gai, meanwhile, was at a different apartment altogether and would likely not be coming home anytime soon.
He realised that Neji was more comfortable not living with the rest of his family, and that made him sour. He’d not been the least bit delicate when he demanded to know what had happened to make Neji forsake his own family. When the sullen teen didn’t answer or spun white-lies, he tried to take his ire out on his nephew’s sensei, instead. That backfired spectacularly in his face, and he was met with the full force of a well-spoken, altruistic, child-advocate who read him to filth on his attempts at getting Neji to ‘confide’ in him.
So, now he was waging some sort of cold war with Maito Gai that the taijutsu master wasn’t even participating in.
And Neji was caught in the middle.
Since the Hyuuga had bridged the gap between head and branch families, people from his side had begun to venture out into their freedom cautiously. Some immediately divorced and went to marry their real lovers, others left Konoha entirely with a new seal on their heads that would only activate upon death. Yet, for many it didn’t change their day to day lives much at all.
Neji was too pessimistic for all the positive change, or rather, he felt too unnerved by it. His only act of rebellion would be to never marry or produce children that would be born into the branch family servitude. Now he felt restless, and that made him prone to fits of overworking himself; as a member of the intelligence division and an innovator who attempted to create and master new jutsu. A distracted and paranoid genius was a dangerous thing.
Proven, once again, by the moment that Neji did something he hadn’t done in a long time.
He fell back on muscle memory, forgetting that wouldn’t work on a nineteen year old Lee.
Lee clocked the exact moment his opponent lost himself in his thoughts. He’d be offended if he wasn’t so worried about his teammate. He’d noticed that Neji was listless, especially since the Hyuuga clan dissolved the division between branch and head families. The first year after the war was spent just getting everyone back on their feet, and the real change began the moment Neji’s uncle stepped into the Hokage’s office to discuss the branch seal removal.
It felt like the true rebirth of their village, and yet, Neji looked more and more unnerved as the months went on. Instead of celebrating the moment, knowing he was an integral part of the movement, he’d just painted on a stoic face and acted like they were on the cusp of some sort of civil war.
It worried him and it worried Tenten, but every time they tried to breach it, Neji would shut the topic down.
He waited to see if Neji would resurface back into the match, but he decided it was time to end it when he started to see that pinched look between his brows. That indicated he was thinking something unhealthy that would end up with him in the hospital for chakra and physical fatigue.
Lee had at least four ways to incapacitate him, but he chose the one that would give him a chance to talk to his friend without the other running off. Neji didn’t even realise he had lost until he was looking up at Lee from the ground, eyes clearing, and mouth pulling into a frown. Lee sat across Neji’s thighs cross-legged, like he had all the time in the world, and gave the other jounin an expectant look.
“Will you talk to me about it?” Lee always hoped that the branch-family genius would finally confide in him without the need to work himself to the edge, but he prepared for him to dig in his heels.
“You won.” Neji sighed and went to sit up, tapping Lee’s knee twice to signal he was giving in.
Except Lee didn’t move, he just crossed his arms too, and then raised his brows.
“I will do the dumb competition, now let me up.” Neji was leaning back on his elbows, tone shifting into one of irritation.
“Firstly, it is not dumb; it is meant to be a fun way to strengthen bonds. Secondly, I know you are worried about something else. I could have ended the match twenty moves ago, but I did not want to hurt you.”
Neji ground his teeth and contemplated physically upending his teammate.
“Do not even think about it,” Lee warned him when he shifted his weight onto one hip ever so slightly, “I have known you since we were children, that will not work on me. Either you talk to me or I will completely incapacitate you.”
Neji never chose the easy path.
xXx
“Seriously!?” Tenten scolded them from the door of the hospital room.
Lee and Neji were not looking at each other, a strained silence suffocating the room. Both of them were covered in bruises and bandages; Neji’s arm was in a brace and Lee had a pressure dressing on his chest. They had, quite clearly, beaten the daylights out of each other.
She looked at Sakura expectantly; the only other person in the room who seemed just as irritated as she did. She was writing on the clipboard so furiously it was a surprise that she didn’t tear through the paper. The healer was standing between the two beds like she didn’t trust them to not lunge at each other again as soon as they had a clear shot. Her lips were pursed and she waited to finish her sentence before she addressed Tenten.
She sounded so tired .
“They demolished two training fields, Sasuke and I had to step in. Neither of them will talk about it, but Lee will burst into tears every once and a while.” She informed her, placing the clipboard across her thighs and then turning to give both men exasperated looks. “Before you try, know that Gai-sensei and Kakashi-sensei both took turns yelling at them and they still won’t say what they were fighting about.”
“I know.” Tenten scratched at the back of her head and then stepped out of the way of the exit. “Go on, I’ll watch these two idiots.”
Sakura turned to Neji, her tone low and dangerous. “If you start a fight in my hospital you will wish you were never born.”
Neji just scoffed.
She turned to Lee and pointed at him threateningly. “Do not let him goad you.”
Lee sniffed and continued staring out the window.
She patted Tenten on the shoulder and then left the room. The third of their trio wasted no time, she pierced the tip of her finger with a kunai and then created a familiar series of seals.
“Kuchiyose no Jutsu.”
Once the smoke cleared, the eight-foot tall bear took in the sight and gave out an irritated sigh. “Again?”
“Again.” Tenten confirmed. “You take Neji, I’ve got Lee.”
Kyoka was a large brown bear-summon with lines and patches of fur missing where large wounds had healed naturally. The largest scar bisected an eye, nose, and diagonally down her chest, where it disappeared under heavy bronze armour. With claws bigger than a grown man’s head, everyone knew that the summon meant business and had no problem tearing through flesh to get a point across.
The bear sat down at the end of Neji’s bed, knee drawn up and elbow resting on it to get comfortable. Even sitting, Kyoka looked just as formidable.
Tenten pulled up a chair between the two of them and turned her attention to the chattier of her two teammates. When he didn’t immediately start talking, she diverted her attention to the Hyuuga, who just glared in defiance.
“This is getting ridiculous, guys.” Tenten was at the edge of her patience and she’d only been there for less than five minutes. “Lee, you can’t just
beat
Neji into talking about his problems, and Neji, you know damn well that he won’t stop asking even if you try to deter him with challenges or punishments.”
“I do not understand why he refuses to talk to us!” Lee was the first to break the sullen quiet.
“I don’t have to share everything about my life with you, Lee!” Neji retorted sharply.
“For the love of all that is good, Neji, no one is asking you to spill every thought that crosses your mind!” The weapon’s master raised her voice to drown out anything Lee could have retorted with. “Clearly you are acting in a way that makes us concerned, or we wouldn’t mention it at all!”
“No one asked you to-”
“-Fuck off with that.” Tenten demanded with a dismissive wave of her hand. “You don’t get to decide to turn our friendship off and on when it’s convenient for you. You’ll lecture us- and, yes, we know that’s how you show you care- but then get defensive when we try to do the same. No one is calling you a liability for having feelings and no one is looking for a weak point to exploit. We love you. You are our best friend. Why do we have to fight tooth and nail to get you to rely on us emotionally? I know you trust us to have your back in battle, why is this so different?”
Neji clenched his fists in the sheets and looked away from his teammates. He was ashamed of his behaviour, but he couldn’t open his mouth or find the words to explain why. It was easier to express himself when he was pushing his body beyond its physical limits, but even then, he could only open up so far.
Perhaps he was scared that once he started, he would be unable to stop until every drop of truth was wrung from his lips, leaving him empty and irrevocably alone.
“You view having feelings as a weakness,” Kyoka spoke up with a terse growl to her tone, “but that is a false narrative. Every animal has emotions, from the biggest predator to the smallest prey. Not expressing them will cause them to erupt at the worst times; damaging you and everyone else around you. I have raised and lost enough cubs to such foolishness.”
“I know I am a liability.” Neji conceded, “but I can’t just… talk on demand.”
The tension in the room eased a bit.
“So, you will talk to us?” Lee’s voice was so full of hope that it made his chest ache.
“Just… not right now. Can we make it past this competition, first?”
It was an olive branch, and Lee was so full of patience and kindness that he immediately took it. Tenten was a little more reluctant to agree, but it didn’t take long for the others in the room to convince her. They changed the topic to the other glaringly obvious thing; the competition that Neji had agreed to participate in. Tenten knew he wasn’t happy about it, but he was at least trying to not be a total sourpuss about it.
Lee was ecstatic.