Work Text:
Slow summer days are meant to be spent in leisure, idly flicking through book pages or television channels until something sparks interest, or stretched out on a towel in the sand while waves crash into shore, or doing literally anything but sitting behind the counter of an otherwise empty storefront.
Tenten wants to do something. Today’s customers have been far and few between. Some months treat her wallet well. The end of July isn’t as kind. Tenten drums her fingertips on the countertop and sighs, her eyes dragging to the mounted wall clock. 4:30. Another half hour before it’s respectable to close for the day.
She’ll close up at five and go home for a quiet night in.
No, Tenten thinks, the cut of loneliness serrating her heart. Summer nights are meant to be spent with friends, reminiscing on good times while creating even more. She’ll call up the girls and see if they want to get a drink.
But the girls are always busy nowadays. Once, a phone call was enough to rally the troops, the impromptu invitation to a night on the town a battle cry in its own right. Recently, hell yeah has taken new forms, such as I’m on call and I just got my kid to sleep.
Scratch girls’ night. Tenten will swing by Lee’s place to visit, entertain Metal until his bedtime, and slip out the door with leftovers in hand.
Except Lee is out on a mission and Metal has been left in Gai-sensei’s care, and while Tenten loves them dearly, their energy doesn’t align with her vision of how tonight should go.
Tenten groans and slumps forward on the counter.
Just once she’d like to have a grand old time with her friends like they used to. Those days are farther and fewer between than her midsummer evening customers.
Tenten doesn’t pick her head up when she hears the door chimes alert the presence of a customer but braces herself for the necessary niceties of engaging with the general population. After years of staffing her own shop she’s got the saccharine voice and the sales pitches locked down. She shouldn’t have to unpeel herself from the countertop until the sap who stumbled in is ready to check out. Returning customers know who she is and how her shop functions.
“Sleeping on the job, are we?”
A longing pang in Tenten’s chest twists something fierce at the sensual voice delivering that playful jab. She lifts her head enough to send Neji a practiced, lackluster glare reading it’s my shop and I’ll do what I want.
Neji cocks a smug brow and approaches the counter, step by familiar step creaking on the wooden floor. “I happen to know the boss here,” he teases as he closes in. He sets the wrapped box in his hands on the counter next to Tenten’s head. “She’d have a fit if she caught you.”
“I wasn’t sleeping,” Tenten lamely defends herself. At Neji’s dry look, she launches upright. “Really! I’m just bored, that’s all. It’s been hours since I had any human interaction. You know how squirrely I get.”
“I do,” Neji nods. “I figured I ought to drop in on my way to Hinata’s.”
Tenten studies the box on her counter. The yellow paper is littered with shiny polka dots and there’s a frilly yellow thing — she’d be hard pressed to call the neat mass of curlicues a bow — stuck in what she’s sure is the mathematical center of the box. Neji’s always been a perfectionist.
She juts her bottom lip in a fake pout. “You mean the present isn’t for me?”
The present obviously isn’t for Tenten. Neji surprises her with small gifts from time to time but he’s never gone as far as to get fancy with wrapping paper on such occasions, much less stick a gift tag on top to let her know that the gift is from her Ji-ji.
“It’s Himawari’s birthday,” Neji reminds Tenten.
There’s no way it’s Himawari’s birthday because it was just Himawari’s birthday, like, a year ago. She turned two years old. Neji gave her a stuffed panda and matching pajamas that Tenten helped pick out. Perfect for sleepovers at her favorite uncle’s apartment.
Tenten’s jaw drops. “She’s three already?!”
“That’s typically how time works, Tenten.”
Time flies.
Time has flown tremendously in the past handful of years, faster than it ever seemed to in Tenten’s youth. Tenten long lost track of the engagement parties and weddings and baby showers, though the invitations to and pictures from each remain stuck to her fridge years after the fact. Treasured mementos; tokens of normalcy as everyone adjusted to adulthood and then hit the ground running. Every moment has mattered, every second accounted for. The last instance of liminal time that Tenten remembers were the days she dragged herself to the hospital for hours on end while waiting on Neji to wake up.
Nine years later, Tenten has her own business and here Neji stands as if he shouldn’t be dead, taller and broader than he was back then, and more relaxed than ever. Adulthood is a good look on Neji, not to Tenten’s surprise, for two main reasons: one, Neji has been acting like a grown up since he was ten and has long had the persona locked down… and two, Tenten is of the opinion that Neji always looks good.
Not that Neji needs to know that.
Tenten is making her peace with that. Even if Neji’s eyes ever do open to the painfully obvious in front of him, he and Tenten have missed the boat. All their friends tied the knot and then their tubes after popping out a kid or two. They’ve all settled into new homes, and new careers, and roles as parents, and Tenten and Neji have not.
Which is fine. Really. Tenten can silence the whispers of what about and what if with the dual buzzes of a big enough glass of wine and her good old hitachi. She couldn’t stick to that routine if her loft apartment above the shop also contained a toddler or two and a husband.
Tenten skews her lips and eyeballs the gift again. Her guess is it’s some sort of doll. “You didn’t ask for my help this year.”
Neji sighs, regretful. “I ought to have. It was the last one at the fourth store I tried, and I nearly had to fight a woman just to get my hands on it. I swear, some of these mothers are…”
The stern, concentrated pull of his brow is a mannerism Tenten has grown to love. “Intense?”
“I was going to say rabid, but intense works as well.”
This, Tenten does laugh at. Twenty-seven years on Earth earlier this month — against what appear to be his best efforts — and Neji may have finally met his match in a middle-aged mom at the toy store. Tenten can almost picture the smackdown: Neji with two not-so-gentle fists versus some lady with a foam sword, the rounds refereed by a faceless store employee with a whistle and nothing better to do, spectators placing bets in front of the bicycles an aisle over.
Tenten’s attention drifts to the wall clock yet again. 4:42. If she can keep Neji talking long enough, she can suck him into helping close up shop. “Those rabid moms wouldn’t stand a chance against you shopping for the kids.”
Neji fidgets, his weight shifting to his hip. “Boruto has always been easy to shop for.”
“But?”
“It feels different for Himawari. Like I could somehow mess it up and she’d hate me forever.”
Tenten chuckles at the anxious hyperbole. She rests her cheek in her hand and gives a slight forward tilt of her head, loose buns bobbing. “She’s three, Neji. She won’t even remember today in a few years.”
“On the contrary,” Neji starts, and he’s got that haughty but factual tone where Tenten can’t tell if he’s about to attempt a joke or reveal something horrific from his childhood. “Hinata and I both remember her third birthday vividly.”
The answer was both! Tenten allows a puff of air through her nose to suffice as an acknowledgment of Neji’s bizarre humor. No curse marks will be administered today on Boruto or anyone else. “Point taken. Are you guys doing anything special for Himawari?”
“She’ll have a party with her friends later. Tonight is just dinner at the house. Cake, presents, the works. I’m sure the birthday girl will rope us into watching a princess movie before the end of the night.”
“She needs a tiara.” Tenten squares her fingers and squints through the gap between them, picturing said tiara atop Neji’s head. “This sounds like a princess party for the ages.”
“Oh, it is.” Neji rests his forearms on the counter and leans forward as if he has something serious to say, but Tenten knows better. She’s hooked on the playful lilt in his voice. “Not just anyone can waltz into the home of the self-proclaimed seventh Hokage, Tenten. This is an invitation only affair.”
He has to feel it. Neji has to feel the energetic shift he’s triggered. There’s a palpable crackle in the tiny space between them, sending heat to Tenten’s face and robbing her of breath.
Tenten swallows. “Damn. No party crashers allowed?”
There’s a twinkle in Neji’s eye — Tenten’s sure of it — as he reaches for his back pocket. “Yes, well, fortunately my slip of the mind and your lack of evening plans—”
“Hey.”
“—have coincided.” Neji points his eyes at Tenten. “Don’t give me that attitude. We both know you were going to order in and fall asleep to late night television.”
Tenten can’t even argue unless she wants to inform Neji that his role as her best friend is threatened by a vibrating godsend that doesn’t sass her unprovoked.
“You still could do that.” Neji pulls a purple piece of folded paper from his pocket and slides it across the countertop. “Or you could help me keep the title of best uncle ever and pretend I gave this to you two weeks ago like I was asked to.”
The purple paper is crinkled from transport, but the copious amount of glitter and toddler scribbles are perfectly intact. There’s a large number three in the left corner with party written even messier, which Tenten recognizes as Boruto’s handwriting, and a rather impressive child’s drawing of a cake with about a billion long, skinny candles on top. The flames look like tiny sunshines. Surely Himawari’s addition.
Hinata’s neat print on the backside provides more context: Tenten is invited to Himawari’s birthday party.
Delighted by the gesture, Tenten brings her invitation to her face for closer inspection. “This is the cutest thing in the world!”
“I meant to give it to you sooner,” Neji apologizes. “Don’t worry, I’m already paying for my negligence. I’ll never get the glitter out of these pants.”
Tenten lightly slugs Neji on the shoulder. “Asshole! I don’t have a present for her or time to get one!”
“Ow,” Neji says, not hurt at all.
Tenten whips her head around the shop floor, searching for something that Himawari might like. “Is she too young for throwing stars? She likes yellow, right?” She leaps from her stool. “I think I have a yellow set in the back—”
“Tenten.” Neji leans further across the counter and gently catches her by the arm, halting her in place and sending a jolt through her body. “Just sign the gift tag.”
He’s left enough space by Love, Ji-ji for and Tenten. Tenten side-steps the thought that if she plays her cards right, future gift tags can also read similarly. “But that’s your present to her!”
Neji swipes a pen from behind the counter quicker than Tenten can argue. “She won’t remember in a few years anyway, right? There’s no harm.”
Tenten hesitates for a fraction of a second.
In that time, Neji lowers the tip of the pen so it barely hovers over the empty space on the gift tag. “Shall I do it for you?”
There’s another crackle in the air when he smirks at her, rendering Tenten completely useless. She gives a small nod.
Watching Neji add her name to the tag lasts all of five seconds, which Tenten thinks is a shame because she could watch Neji do anything all day. They’ve not been on a mission together in months. It’s thrilling, how Neji’s focused gaze affects her even when it isn’t directed at her.
More fuel for her midnight fire.
“There,” Neji announces. He clicks the pen shut and returns it to its rightful place. “Now if Himawari dislikes her present, she’ll hate both of us forever.”