Tongue-Tied: Part 7
Summary: It's no secret that, sometimes, Hyuuga Hinata gets a little tongue-tied. Despite her best efforts, it's a bad habit that she simply must live with. As it turns out, Uchiha Sasuke sometimes finds himself at a lost for words himself -- but only around a certain someone.
Tags: Post-War | Naruverse | Fluff | Romance | Awkward Romance | Hinata's POV | Canon Divergent | Misunderstandings | Hurt/Comfort | Mutual Pining
Hinata wakes with a kind of whimsy that comes with those special kinds of dreams. She spends her morning idly, taking an extra five minutes in the shower and combing the tangles out of her damp hair with smooth, slow strokes, smiling to herself. Sitting on the engawa, the fresh sunlight cuts through the misty cold and warms her skin. Most of her clansmen pass by in wonder and concern; it is, after all, close to freezing, and yet their heiress is combing her hair in such temperature. Anyone would stare.
Neji and Hanabi see, as well. They, however, are not confused or startled at all. They see that dreamy look on Hinata’s face, and they know exactly what has caused it. Neji’s gaze narrows in slight disgust, and Hanabi grins and skips over to sit next to her sister.
“Last night must have been nice.”
Hinata isn’t really thinking about last night. She’s thinking about that dream where she takes Sasuke to an alleyway behind some nameless bar and kisses him – and he kisses her back. Over and over again, for what felt like hours. In reality, Hinata would have been stupefied at the prospect of clinging to Uchiha Sasuke like she had in her dream; but that is an image in the safe confines of her mind.
“Nothing happened last night, Hanabi,” she muses with a light sigh.
Hanabi nudges her sister. “Could’a fooled me with how you looked last night after your date.”
At this, Neji approaches in a more severe mood than he was in just minutes ago. He looms over his cousins and scowls at them both. “Watch your tongue. For all we know, it was a strategical meeting between colleagues.”
His words hardly hold any weight. Hanabi all but blows him off with a snort. “Strategical meetings don’t include make-out sessions.”
Hinata flinches as a cold bellow of wind scrapes across her skin. That hardly makes sense at all. Everything that happened at the bar was a dream, so how does her sister . . . ?
Oh no.
“Oh my god.” A merciless wave of shame hits Hinata hard, turning her face into a forest of fire and red. She covers her eyes with her hands and squeezes them hard, as if to wake up again, as if all of this is a dream as well. But Hanabi and Neji stay, and the cold stays, and Hinata now must come to terms with the fact that – “I really did kiss him.”
Hanabi squeaks with glee. “I knew it!”
Neji groans and pinches the space between his furrowed brows. “I was content with pretending nothing of the sort transpired last night, but now it seems we both must face the facts, Hinata.”
…
The morning is full of flashes of last night playing across Hinata’s brain, in which she would squeak and blush and pray that she could just forget everything that had happened. It was a mistake. It had to have been! The mistake of two drunk people who didn’t really know what they were doing. If they had been sober, that sort of thing never would have happened. Sasuke would have walked her home, and Hinata might have invited him in for tea, and that would be it. No dragging into shadowy alleyways. No sudden kisses or creeping hands under shirts – lord, definitely not any of that!
And no confessions about finding someone so beautiful that they can hardly stand to say it out loud. Which . . . would make Hinata a little sad, if she’s being honest. If Sasuke only found her beautiful when he was drunk – if he only had the desire to kiss her when he was drunk – if he only struggled with the ache to stay with her for the rest of the night when he was drunk – that would make her more than sad.
Some say that the words and actions of a drunk person are the real desires of a sober mind. Well, that’s definitely true on Hinata’s end after she all but ravaged him. But for Sasuke?
How could anyone know?
Well, there’s a few ways. Ways that would require Hinata to gather her courage and talk to him.
And this is what she contemplates on her way to the bar. In those flashes of memory, she recalls how they had left their coats behind and how they had never paid the tab, and even in her embarrassed state that makes her want to hide in bed, Hinata is determined to right her wrongs. The village passes by with not a clue of what had happened last night. Store owners still sweep their floors as merchants and businessmen head in for another day’s work. Life seems to carry on as usual, and Hinata is a little jealous at how simple it seems for everyone else.
When she reaches the bar, she works on pulling of her gloves as her left shoe pushes open the door. She stuffs them in her pockets and dusts a few sprinkles of snow out of hair, and only when she’s a few steps inside does she look up and see Sasuke at the bar with the bartender. Her coat is in the notch of her elbow, and a few bills are on the bar top.
Ah. It seems that they had the same idea. Hinata would be thrilled if she weren’t so totally stunned. Within a second’s time, her face burns pink, and her heart sounds so loud that half of Konoha must be able to hear it.
Oh my gosh.
He’s here.
Shit! What do I say?
What can anyone say in this situation?
A strange mixture of humiliation and absolute glee churns through her body. Is she being obvious with what she’s feeling? Neji says her face is like a mirror to her emotions: reflective and easy to read. The total opposite of Sasuke, who looks like it’s just another day in Konoha – as if they hadn’t done all those things to each other just the night before. A face of complete voidness. Unreadable.
Hinata bites back the instinct to run. Instead, she steps further inside until, eventually, she reaches the bar.
“Good . . . morning,” she whispers. It’s the only thing her frantic mind can think to say.
The bartender, counting money, grumbles a returning ‘good morning’. Sasuke lifts his arm just enough to offer her coat, which Hinata takes and quick fits over the one she’s wearing.
“Thank you.” She can hardly look at his face. Will he think it strange if she studies the floor or the back wall for too long? “I-I, um, was going to pay for it. I guess . . . you, um, beat me to it.”
His dark eyes settle on her in a way that can be physically felt. Somehow, she can feel how his gaze sweeps across her. It lights her up and makes something fuzzy and noisy get stuck between her ears.
“You can pay me back,” he says, so low and self-assured that it sounds deeper that just the words. Suggestive.
And when Hinata finally looks back, she sees it in those usually blank eyes of his. There is double-meaning to his words, and he knows it, and he means it. It’s so obvious that even the bartender pauses for a moment to shift and frown at the suddenly tense atmosphere.
You can pay me back. And with how Sasuke’s looking at her, he doesn’t mean with money – that, Hinata is absolutely sure about.
And based on the many things that transpired last night, Hinata has a good idea of what, exactly, he’s suggesting.
Her knees lock up. Her mind turns light and foggy. Part of her screams ‘yes, absolutely!’ while the other part is on the brink of fainting. Sasuke must see this, too, for with a blink, all that weight and heat behind his eyes disappears.
“Your choice,” he drones.
He takes the coins of change the bartender slips to him, and without another word, he slips outside. A bit of the cold rushes in and gathers around Hinata’s legs. It hardly stirs her from her state of absolute bewilderment. Her mind is trying to catch up while her heart sings for her to follow Sasuke.
This has to mean he didn’t mind last night, right? That, maybe, he’d like for it to continue?
Or he’s still drunk. That can happen, right?
He doesn’t seem drunk, but just because Sasuke doesn’t act a certain way doesn’t mean anything. He’s a professional at acting aloof and nonchalant when, well, he could be thinking and feeling the exact same things that she’s currently thinking and feeling.
“About time,” the bartender sighs, ducking under the bar to grab at something. “I thought he’d never leave. Don’t he know that most bars don’t open til noon? And yet here he was at ten in the fuckin’ morning, waiting around all these hours. And for what? To pay a tab and grab a few coats!”
Hinata doesn’t need a watch to know that ten was at least three hours ago.
Pulse fluttering, she hurries outside. She’s half a second away from activating her byakugan so she can track him with ease, but even that’s not necessary. Suddenly, Sasuke leaps down from the roof of a nearby building, grabs her arm, and leads her off into an awfully familiar alleyway.
“Nevermind,” he says. “I’m not waiting anymore.”
He settles her on a stack of boxes that push into the backs of her thighs in a way that brings a load of memories from just the night before into her mind. He leverages his hand next to her hip, leans in, and brushes his mouth just across hers. It’s nothing like their first kiss, which balanced on heated desperation and desire. Despite his words, he’s giving her a chance to back out if she so chooses.
Which, obviously, isn’t happening.
Hinata doesn’t hesitate to wrap her arms around his neck to bring him closer.
…
A small sliver of reality hiccups across her foggy, pink-colored mind when that big, warm hand caresses the skin of her waist. Feathers tickle up her spine and make her arch into him, and just like that, Hinata breaks away from his needy mouth and clasps onto his shoulders.
“Wait, Sasuke.” She gulps in the cold air as he stares at her, not bothering to give her much room to breathe. He seems determined to continue their . . . activities after she says whatever is on her mind. In fact, he’s already leaning in to capture her mouth again before she even knows what she’s trying to say. “I – um, do you know – I mean, o-obviously you know what’s, um, happening. But I’m – I’m –” She squints and pinches her lips together, “Hinata.”
. . . Well, that’s obvious.
She’s grateful he has the decency to not laugh at her. Instead, his head tilts the slightest bit.
“You’re Hinata,” he says, and she shivers at his slightly breathless way of saying her name.
“I mean, um . . . .” In her head, everything makes sense, but she just can’t seem to get the words out in a way that makes sense. “How do I say this?” When Sasuke’s fingers trace up to her ribs, Hinata all but loses her train of thought. She enjoys the feel of them on her skin for a moment, then grabs at his arm to gently nudge his touch downwards. “I-I’m trying to think, Sasuke.”
He hums, then leans to the side to kiss the corner of her jaw. That also feels very, very nice. It’s getting harder and harder for her to think.
“You’re distracting me,” she breathes.
When he reaches her neck, he adds a bit of teeth to his kisses. “Then think faster.”
“I just . . . I just –” Huffing, she takes his face in her hands and brings him back to eye-level. “I’m Hinata. You’re . . . you’re kissing Hinata.”
Because it seems so strange that, in a way, she’s questioning reality. Before a few weeks ago, Uchiha Sasuke has never shown any interest in her; and even still, walking someone home or spotting beetles in the forest doesn’t exactly showcase romantic interest. Up until last night, Hinata was absolutely sure he was only interested in some kind of friendship with her. So why, all of the sudden, is this happening? Why is he kissing her like he’s waited decades to do exactly this?
Sasuke blinks at her. “Obviously.”
“Which means, u-um, that you want to kiss me.”
“Obviously.”
It’s hard to swallow the glob of sheer joy just that one word gives her, but Hinata manages. “S-So . . . why?”
Sasuke stares at her for a rather long time, as if the question has stunned him. Maybe he hadn’t considered this before. Maybe he was just doing it because, for some reason, something inside him told him to.
“I don’t know,” he grounds out, removing his face from her hands as he leans back. Then, before she can even consider what the hell those words could possibly mean, he shakes his head. “That’s not it. I know why. Of course I know why.”
And instead of telling her and clearing up so many of her question (or adding more to them), Sasuke leans in and nips at her bottom lip – and Hinata, for once, throws everything into the wind and settles into the taste of him once more.
…
Hinata decides that, probably, Sasuke wants her to figure it out herself. Maybe he’s timid, or maybe he likes to torture her with her questions, but either way, it’s up to her to figure out why.
The easiest way to do so is to ask his team, but Naruto is a no-go and Hinata’s not sure what stage Sakura is at with her own feelings for Sasuke – and, well, Kakashi is the current Hokage and basically her boss, and it would be embarrassing to ask him such questions about his own student. But there are many teachers who are close to Lord Hokage that he may his spilled secrets to over beer and conversation.
Kurenai, of course, being the most obvious choice.
So Hinata buys a few packages of her instructor’s favorite tea, and she sits and plays in the living room with Mirai as tea is being prepared. Kurenai comes with a tray of cookies, which Mirai is the most excited about, and they drink tea and chat for a while until Hinata finds the right opening.
“There’s . . . something I want to ask.”
Kurenai smiles in that way that Hinata knows well. Her teacher knows her students very well. She can tell when something is bothering them, and she knows when to push and when to wait patiently. She sends Mirai to the kitchen to clean the cups and start a new batch of tea, and once they’re alone, she gives her entire attention to Hinata.
“Go on.”
“Well . . .” How does one go about this? Should she just confess to what has transpired in the last twenty-four hours, or should she start from the very beginning? Somehow, Sasuke’s name will not form on her tongue, and Hinata’s face turns a striking scarlet. “Say, um, that someone kisses you–“
Kurenai’s hand reaches across the low table and grabs Hinata’s. “Kiss? Who!”
Hinata’s gaze flickers to the pile of Mirai’s crayon drawings set neatly to the side. “Um. Let’s say . . . a mysterious person?”
Her teacher’s wide eyes blink as her mouth hangs slightly open. After a while, she nods and settles. “Alright, sure. A mysterious person.”
“Last night, a mysterious person kissed me.”
“Mhmm.”
‘And I, um, kissed him back.”
Kurenai’s eyes darken and flicker in that contemplative way. Hinata has no doubt that she’s going through a list of every bachelor in Konoha that could possibly be her ‘mysterious person’. And if it weren’t for the absolute mystery surrounding Sasuke, her teacher would probably figure it out rather quickly.
“When someone kisses you,” Hinata starts, hesitates, starts again, “why do they do it?”
Kurenai’s head tilts, and her red lips stretch into a knowing smile. “Why do you think?”
“Because they like you.” Hinata’s heart putters and croaks. “But – but he doesn’t. He can’t.”
“Hmmm.” Kurenai’s grin turns wide and confident, as if she’s figured everything out. Which is impossible, isn’t it? There’s no way she could have guessed – “Are you sure he doesn’t, Hinata?”
Well, not 100%, but Hinata’s at least 90% sure that there is no way that Uchiha Sasuke can hold any romantic feelings towards her. As someone who has held a decade love crush, she would know what love would look like. She’d be able to sniff it out in an instance!
Sasuke has never shown a hint of it. Ever.
“You . . . you think he does?”
“Hinata,” Kurenai says, kindly and on the edge of a laugh, “I think this mysterious person has had a thing for you since you both were in the Academy.”
. . . But then again, because of her decade long crush on the ever-unaware Uzumaki Naruto, Hinata is also painfully aware that, sometimes, people are simply oblivious to the most obvious of things.
