novocaine || naruto characters x reader one shots

“What do you want, Kiba?” You roll your eyes, letting him drag you aside. It’s probably not an awful idea, but you don’t trust him enough to be fully on board without hearing him out first. “I’ll say it now if it isn’t obvious: if I’m your last resort, then that means too many people have said no already for it to be a good idea.”

“Chill out, I haven’t asked anyone else,” he glanced around. This piqued your interest. He hadn’t asked anyone else? That was one hell of a red flag, but, well… now you were curious. “It’s about Hinata and Naruto.”

“Yeah, I think they’d be cute together.”

“No, that’s not what I’m—” Kiba shakes his head. “That’s not what I’m asking.” 

“Then what are you asking?” The question leaves him visibly vexed and irritated, but the way he scrunches his nose is a little funny, so you don’t feel bad about it. “C’mon, spit it out.” Your nails start to scratch behind Akamaru’s ears, and he leans into the motion, panting a little. “I don’t have all day. Well, I don’t have anything planned, but it’s important to me that it stays that way.”

“I need you to distract Neji while Hinata and Naruto go on a mission alone.” Kiba crosses his arms against his chest. That’s… very open to interpretation. You start to speak, but he continues and you shut your mouth. “Obviously after the chunin exams, Neji held Naruto in higher regards, but still, that doesn’t mean he wants him to date his cousin.”

“It’s… that’s none of Neji’s business, why do you even need someone to distract him?”

“I don’t know, (Y/n), it’s just in case,” he gestures in frustration. “Just fight him for a few hours and then you can go home and do whatever.” 

“And why me?” That’s the most important part, really. Why would Kiba want you specifically to fight arguably one of the most powerful genin in the Leaf Village? You were notoriously lazy and lacking in ambition. Kiba had no idea it was a front, so why in God’s name would he want you to fight Neji? You tried to scan his expression, but it didn’t change much. “Don’t say you think I have a chance of winning. Y’know, I might die. Death is not an impossibility here.” Naruto and Hinata would definitely be adorable together, but not to the point where you would die for them. “I know we’re not the best of friends, but if this is your way of getting rid of me, it’s not subtle and it’s not clever, either.”

“You really need me to explain it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do. That’s why I fucking asked, Kiba. I think it might help a little.” Shit—your mask is slipping, you raised your voice; you’re sounding a bit aggravated. The genin looks surprised. God damn it. “Sorry, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.” God, that’s a shitty excuse. And you wonder why you’ve never used it before. You rarely ever get sleep. Actually, it’s probably because you’ve never had to use it before. You usually didn’t have a problem keeping a handle on your placid expression, so you never had to apologize for your asshole behavior. “Anyways, yeah. I don’t get it. Why me?”

The genin exhales, still a bit shaken off by your tone. That was so stupid of you, you’d have to kick yourself for it later. “Well, for starters, you don’t know Neji very well.” He wasn’t wrong, you supposed. “You enjoy provoking people who get upset easily, and you adjust to things easily. For example, last week. I remember asking what you had for lunch, and you just shrugged and said that you couldn’t tell the future. Neji’s worldview centers around the idea of fate and determinism, and if you talk at all while fighting, it’ll piss him off and you’ll think it’s funny. Time will pass more easily.” He taps his left palm with two fingers. “Second, you’re good at improvising and you don’t have much pride in yourself, so even though Neji is powerful, you have the instincts to find your way out of any situation because of your sheer commitment to not committing to anything. And third, you’re mildly attractive but not vain, and that might distract him.” Kiba spreads his palms to both sides. “That’s my reasoning. Do you want me to show my work for extra credit?”

Something’s off here, and that’s your central dilemma: why is Kiba doing this? Especially for Naruto and Hinata’s relationship. It needed to be done at some point, Hinata was too terrified to confess to him without external intervention, and Naruto was too dense to notice her feelings; but why was Kiba so invested in this? Did it really warrant this much thought and care? You must have been staring at him, because he raised an eyebrow at you, and you cleared your throat, averting your gaze. “You’re not asking me to seduce Neji.” It wasn’t a question.

“No shit, (Y/n). Only if nothing else works.” Kiba shrugs. Then it hits you. Of course.

Your index finger points at him, the rest curled into a pistol. “You like her.”

“That’s… irrelevant.” Kiba was really a terrible person to try and mess with, because given those red triangles on his cheeks, it’s pretty hard to tell when he’s blushing at first glance. “I just want her to be happy. It doesn’t matter to me who she cares about, I just want her to be happy. She’s found that in Naruto, I guess.”

“Aw, good boy,” you grabbed his collar and rubbed your knuckles into his roots. Kiba hissed, trying to finagle himself out of your noogie, but it was too late. “That’s rough, buddy. Sorry about your predicament.”

“You tell a soul and you’re dead,” he mutters. It’s a pretty sad situation, but he’s being… seriously mature about all of this. You wouldn’t have the same perspective in his position. It’s admirable, a side of him you hadn’t seen before. And because of that—because of his willingness to be vulnerable in front of you—you have to delegate a solid amount of respect to the genin in front of you. “I’m serious. I will murder you.” His tone is earnest enough, but you got the feeling that if he really wanted to threaten you, Akamaru would have stopped nuzzling your thigh.

Miming sewing your mouth shut and tossing away the key, you offered him a neutral smile. Guys like Kiba probably didn’t want pity, just the semblance of privacy. That much you could provide. “My lips are sealed. You’re a good friend for that, Kiba.”

He exhales for a bit too long, running a hand through his hair. “Whatever, (Y/n).” Biting his lip, he glances back at you, anxious to change the subject, probably. “So what do you say? Are you in?” After what he told you? Of course. Any day. But the version of you that he knows, that the rest of the village knows, would be more hesitant. She wouldn’t throw her hat in the ring quite so quickly. So you pretend to mull it over, before sighing and throwing your hands up in the air with a lazy grin.

“Sure, why not?”

That’s nothing close to what Neji says in response.

In fact, it’s a lot closer to “Excuse me, but who are you?”

You laugh, pretending that it didn’t sting. “Does it really matter?”

The genin holds his fingers to his chin in a moment of silent contemplation. “You must be (Y/n).”

“Fun. What tipped you off?” You needed to keep your tone lax, needed to remind yourself that you were supposed to be calm right now. Your placid demeanor came from repeated exposure to people you grew up with, not around people you didn’t know very well. 

“Your cavalier tone,” Neji explained. You felt yourself redden in secondhand embarrassment. Jeez… did he not get that it was sarcasm? Today was going to be a trainwreck, you could already tell. Whatever—you were doing this for Kiba, for Hinata and Naruto. “Besides, you looked somewhat familiar. However, your reputation precedes you.”

“How touching.” You started to clean out some of the dirt from under your fingernails. “So do you want to fight or not?”

Neji raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to beat someone else, but I don’t see the point. I’ll just beat you, and I doubt it’ll help you in the slightest.”

You shrug, keeping Kiba’s words in mind. Neji’s worldview centers around the idea of fate and determinism, and if you talk at all while fighting, it’ll piss him off and you’ll think it’s funny. He… kind of had a point, there. “Comme ci, comme ça. You don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Ah, so now you’ve got his attention. He opens his mouth and closes it, gathering his thoughts. Clearly he thought he was about to respond without thinking first, and it was going to be so rash. Kiba was right, this was kind of hilarious, how worked up he got. “Fate isn’t adjustable.”

“Yeah, but how do you know it’s fate? Maybe I’ll beat you, maybe I won’t.”

“Are you suggesting you have a tactic that would beat me?”

“Whoa, buddy. Hold your horses.” His movements were so elegant, especially next to yours. “I didn’t say that. I just said that you don’t know you’ll beat me.”

“Okay. I’ll fight you.” Neji’s eyes are narrowed. Damn, you didn’t think it’d be this easy… You try your best to hide the victorious grin attempting to spread across your face. “And I’ll win.”

“Will you?” You raise an eyebrow. You can tell it’s driving him insane.

“Absolutely,” he grits his teeth. You have his full attention. Damn, you haven’t messed with someone like this in years… This is the best. “You wanted to fight without jutsu, correct? Just taijutsu?”

You nod, crossing your arms and adjusting into a casual stance. Balanced enough to absorb a hit, but flexible enough to keep you light on your feet. Neji definitely noticed it. It’s funny that he thinks he’ll need to use his Byakugan. If you beat him, it won’t be with something visible. He mirrors your actions somewhat, and you realize his reaction was in response to the fact that your stance happened to resemble his, which you knew from watching his fight with Naruto was a fighting style passed down solely within the Hyuuga clan.

His chest was his center of gravity, so you let your gaze settle there. In a moment of panic, you remember that Neji can see your chakra networks, and he can disable your access to chakra with a single blow. And that that move doesn’t count as jutsu, because it’s the taijutsu passed down within the Hyuuga clan. Maybe he didn’t look like he was about to block your chakra networks, but you had no way of telling whether or not he was dangerous in the moment.

Neji moved first, and you ducked, aiming to take out his legs, but he saw you move first, and all of a sudden, you were under Neji. Gaze flitting across his frame, you tried to assess his weak points, if any. He hasn’t immobilized your arms yet, so you reach around to grab at his long hair, tugging it back and rolling over. Neji lets out an uncharacteristically high-pitched yelp, but as soon as you get on top of him, he’s reversed your positions, this time his strands of pitch-black hair dangling in front of his face and grazing the bare skin of your shoulders.

He has you pinned to the ground, essentially helpless, the azure glow of chakra flickering and dancing across his fingertips as they near your heart. “Why did you ask me to do this,” he murmurs, completely focused on the task at hand. You can’t say the same for yourself; your thoughts continue to wander towards how he’s straddling you, the force with which he shoved you to the ground, how tightly he’s holding back your arm, how… exposed you feel under him. “You know you’re weak. You’re barely putting up a fight. Something is wrong.” There’s an atypical glint in his pale eyes; his fervor is leading to an opening. “This isn’t normal. Usually you would admit that you’re beyond redemption and give up, but this is entirely out of character for you. Who put you up to this? Why didn’t you ask Lee for help with taijutsu?”

“I… have a crush on him?” Scrambling for any excuse, your tone came off more like you were asking him than confessing anything, trying to cover up the hare-brained plan Kiba had concocted. If anything, mentioning the fact that this was for his cousin would aggravate him further, so this was a better save. Neji makes direct eye contact, eyebrows furrowed in clear confusion. “Yeah, I… have a crush on Lee, which would make it awkward for me to be around him. A—and you’re his rival, so—!” Everything was coming together, now. “Might even make him jealous, ha…”

“You like him?” Neji sits up, his grip loosening as he rises only up to his knees, letting you prop yourself up a little. You nod. His eyes cloud over a little; he seems… the closest to bewildered you had ever seen him. “Lee? Rock Lee?” Nodding again, you start to wonder if this was the best decision. “You like Lee, to the point where you would want to grow stronger solely to impress him.” His eyebrow quirked when you nodded yet again. “...Why?”

“I mean,” you shifted the position of your legs under the guise of embarrassment, “he’s strong, he cares about other people. He has clear ambition.” Neji still doesn’t understand. “And,” you feign a longing sigh and one of those sweet smiles you see the love interests make in manga, “most of all, he wouldn’t fall for this.” Your tone falters by the end, and you can see Neji open his mouth to say something, but in the half of a second after you finish your sentence, your thigh swings up to his shoulders, effectively rolling him over and placing you on his chest.

The genin looks so… caught off guard. That was close. Too close. “Dirty trick,” he mumbles, but it’s not venomous. In fact, if you didn’t know better, he might have even been blushing. Probably not. You let an unabashed grin cross your face for the first time in this entire practice. “So you were lying?”

“Yup,” you adjust your position very slightly. “Sure was. Lee’s okay, I guess. You , my friend, made the fatal error of letting your guard down.” 

“While we’re on the topic of fatal errors,” he sounds rather strained; you can feel his shoulders try to move under your weight, “I had the courtesy to keep polite distance, and then you gained the upper hand. Which is why, I assume, your thighs are so close to my face.”

Shit. So he was blushing. You clear your throat, trying to compose yourself. “Please. That was hardly polite distance. You were basically straddling me.” Now you couldn’t move your legs. That would be like admitting he was right. “You didn’t need to do that, I’m on top of you because I was trying to get out from under you.”

“Didn’t necessarily seem like it.” Neji looked awfully smug from between your legs. “You felt pretty powerless under me, didn’t you?”

He wasn’t wrong. You did feel weak, feel powerless under his oppressive frame, but… you were lying if you said that you didn’t enjoy it. “Y’know what, I could strangle you right now,” you muttered, a hint of heat gathering in your cheeks, but he just kept smirking. It was… infuriating.

It was all just too much. Neji was far too close for comfort. He was close enough to—to—

Out of nowhere you flinched and scooted backwards, the image of Neji dragging his tongue across the fabric of your shorts far too much for you to handle. As soon as you moved back, the genin sat up, his knees bent enough to—oh, God, you were straddling him, you landed back somewhere too… intimate for you to be comfortable. His larger hand sank into your shoulder, pale eyes burning into yours. “So you don’t like Lee,” he murmured, tone completely even, providing a sharp contrast to the red on his face, “but do you like me?”

Your gaze flitted down to his lips and back up to his eyes, and by the time he kissed you, you weren’t completely sure which of you had initiated it. Of all people, you had zero expectations for Neji to know what he was doing, but at the moment, your mind had gone completely blank, and all you really knew was that this felt good as hell and you needed it to keep going. You gripped his collar, pulling him down on top of you. 

It didn’t seem like he cared enough to remain pursuant of an answer to his question, and it also seemed like he got his answer. You gathered large portions of his sleek hair into a makeshift updo at the base of his neck, keeping it from getting in the way and wrapping your arms around him in the process. Neji pressed some of his weight onto your biceps and shoulders, forcing your hands out of his hair and freeing up your collarbone for him to separate, a thin line of saliva connecting his lips to yours, before moving towards where your jaw met your neck.

The smallest, quietest kind of groan left your throat, and after what felt like barely a few seconds, Neji kissed you again, hard enough to make your head spin even with your eyes closed. There was something there, something that had been festering for some period of time. Maybe this would have happened even if you said no at the start, maybe the two of you would have ended up alone some other time and you still would be here. You didn’t have a lot of time to think about other people, but in the few times the two of you had passed, he wasn’t easily ignored. That was such a passive way to describe it. It didn’t explain any of this fervor, it didn’t provide any reasoning behind the way you were pulling him closer, it didn’t tell you why he seemed like he needed to be this close or he would fucking die. It all depended on that one choice you made, to do a favor for Kiba, to do a favor for… Wait, hold up… 

Wait… wait a minute, you should probably—

“Neji, you… you don’t, uh,” you panted into the kiss, a little unfocused, “you don’t care who Hinata dates, r—right?”

Neji narrowed his eyes. “It means nothing to me,” he sounded somewhat annoyed, “why?”

“No reason,” and you leaned in again, but he sat up a bit, the heat gathering in your core left to dispel itself elsewhere. It’s alien, and cold, and… it feels like someone ripped out your IV minutes before they were supposed to. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s dead,” Neji announces, miffed, before offering you his hand. You shake it, thoroughly confused. “Why were you thinking about my cousin?” That tone of betrayal… It feels out of place. He continues when you don’t respond. “I’ll see you when I see you.” The Hyuuga stands up, looking down at you with an expression you can’t quite place.

“Y… yeah,” you straighten your posture, completely bewildered, “I’ll see you when I see you.”

He left you in the middle of the clearing, sitting up and rubbing your neck where he sank his teeth. You brushed digits against your lips, swollen from being kissed, and tried to understand what exactly just happened. 

So he didn’t care at all. In which case… why did Kiba think this was an issue? Unless… Unless he had spoken with Neji beforehand and Neji had feigned disapproval because he knew that Kiba would send you as a distraction and he would get that opportunity. But… but no, that wasn’t possible. That was too difficult to foresee, probably. Then why didn’t Kiba account for the possibility that Neji wouldn’t give two shits about what Hinata does with her life? That had to be predictable. After all, the two of them weren’t exactly close. And why would Neji care that Naruto and Hinata were going alone? Maybe he would snitch about the fact that it was only two people going on a mission. But given the lack of manpower in the Leaf Village at the moment, that shouldn’t be anyone’s priority… so… what could possibly explain how these different factors collided like this? It had to be planned from the start. The likelihood of Neji simply deciding he wanted to make out with you, as a heat-of-the-moment, split-second decision, was a thousand to one. So why in God’s name would he—

“I’m guessing it went well?” A jolt to your system. You must have looked pensive. “They’re out on the mission. You can go back to your plans of doing nothing, now, if you want.” Akamaru wagged his tail in agreement, followed by a soft bark. “I mean, uh, me, Shikamaru, and Choji are getting dinner, if you want to tag along.”

“Fine by me,” you murmur, switching back to your typical aloof demeanor. “Should be nice to hang around some… friends.” Some well-needed platonic connection. “Thanks for the invite. You sure everyone else is fine with it?”

Kiba rolls his eyes, and you can tell he’s glad you haven’t brought up his earlier concession. “What are you, insecure? We’re all friends. I’m sure it’s fine.”

“Thanks a lot, man.” You wipe your chin a bit. 

“Yeah, anytime,” and the two of you head out.