Chapter 8
Contrary to popular belief, Hyuuga Hinata is not afraid of many things.
Hinata is an understanding person; she gets why people have fears and phobias, and why such things might drive them to scream, or cry, or flee. She understands that even though in her mind, bugs, monsters, and fictional killers all have weaknesses and can all be controlled, should one apply the right strategies, that people can still find them scary despite that. She understands this especially in cases involving allergies, or memories, or childhood traumas.
She recognizes the psychology behind it all; but seeing it right in front of her eyes, in people of her young adult age and even above, is a novel experience in and of itself.
It’s easy to guess some peoples’ fears, like Ino and commitment, or Kakashi and an Icha Icha hiatus, or Choji and depleted food stores. Others, like Tenten, Neji, and Kiba, remain a bit of a mystery even still.
She found Shikamaru’s fear to be among the most baffling when discovered—how can someone who uses shadows as a predominant attack force be afraid of the dark? Hinata surmises that there’s a difference between shadows and shadows; that a shadow-user without the aiding presence of light would have no love for total darkness.
It doesn’t take her long to figure out most of their fears by simple observation, and to understand them without much background history provided, either. She makes her way through her generation and their team leaders, gets to the Hokage, and realizes that the only person whose strongest fear she can’t quite pin down is Uzumaki Naruto’s.
This is not to say that he’s fearless; quite the opposite, as Hinata soon realizes when the Rookie Nine all gather for a haunted festival and Hinata hears Naruto whimper several times before they’re even in the entrance gate.
She watches him carefully as the night fills with screams, and shrieks, and pleas. The sky overhead is as unforgiving as the festival’s mood, with barely a star in sight through a haze of turbulent clouds and a faded pitch-black sky. Smoke curls through the air, a presence largely unseen but unmistakable to her senses. People scurry around her, some moving cautiously in, some fleeing carelessly out.
She and her group move guardedly forward, approaching the blood red drapes framing the entrance to what appears to be a haunted maze. Many of the Rookies are clutching each others’ arms, walking in threes or fives, while Kiba and Hinata stick towards the back of the group and cast curious, watchful glances around at their surroundings. Naruto is a step in front of her and off to the side, just close enough for her to notice whenever he blanches, or holds his breath, or squeezes his own sides to keep his nerves relatively settled.
“Naruto-kun,” Hinata finally calls, as softly as possible so as to not startle him. Her efforts are futile, however, as Naruto’s nerves are apparently more keyed up than she’d originally thought. He turns to her with hiraishin speed, eyes wide and teeth grinding down to keep him from screaming. She casts a sympathetic look his way even as Kiba mutters something derisive under his breath and moves up beside a wraith-like Shino, whose hands are inconspicuously wringing.
“Wanna walk with me?” She asks, tilting her head when he shuffles over to her before the words are even completely out of her mouth. He smiles gratefully, and she can see sweat on his brow. She tries to place this image of Naruto, nearly shaking, next to the one she has of him standing in a long line of the strongest shinobi alive, smiling guilelessly, and struggles with it. The disparity between the two is amusing enough to make her laugh, though she has enough tact to turn her head away before doing so. She doesn’t need to add embarrassment to his already frazzled nerves.
“Thanks,” he breathes, and tucks his arm through hers without a word of warning. “This place is so not cool.”
“It’s definitely easier to go through with a buddy system in place,” Hinata promises him, even while her cheeks flare with heat. He’d probably prefer to be in the middle of Ino’s group, a jumbled pack of five that stand so close together they’re almost a solid wall. Yet, when she glances over at Naruto again, he looks far more relaxed in her grip, and doesn’t even flinch when she clutches his sleeve with her free hand. His eyes are still shifty, though, so she makes sure to pull him in close when they step through the drapes.
Their plan, as the Rookies had hashed out before stepping foot onto the festival’s grounds, was to stick together no matter the cost.
So of course the moment they step through the drapes into utter darkness, Naruto and Hinata find themselves taking the path less trodden, so to speak. That being, their groups seem to split in three, and Naruto and Hinata find themselves alone in a maze with monsters of all shapes, sizes, and varieties around every corner. Naruto is palpably nervous, so much so that she starts to worry that he might unconsciously Rasengan someone working the maze.
She tries to pull him in closer to her, especially around the corners, but it’s like the workers can smell his fear. They hone in on him and attack unflinchingly, even when he starts shouting threats that Hinata is fairly certain they know he can back up.
Their steps take them deeper and deeper into the maze, curling around endless paths both steep and unbalanced and nothing less than treacherous; past walls and walls of nothing but shadows. There’s the fairest hint of light every now and again, but it’s usually cast against a mirror or three, and reflected as such in ways that only seem to make direction impossible. Naruto clutches her arm tight enough for her fingertips to tingle with loss of sensation, but she doesn’t much mind, because she’s tucked against his side and he seems to want her there.
He seems to want her even closer.
She tries not to get ahead of herself.
She reminds herself around every corner, in every pause where a creature of the night pops out and scares Naruto nearly to tears, that he’d latch on to anyone in her position, just as tightly, and just as insistently. She’s not special; she’s just lucky to have become that person for tonight.
At least, that’s what she tells herself.
There’s no sign—or sound, since it’s too dark to see much of anything at all, anyways—of either of their groups. There seems a chorus of nonstop screams laced over the constant thrum of fog machine generators and the flapping of material in the wind, but none of them recognizable.
Hinata doesn’t even pause over the realization that she knows the pitch of every one of her friends’ screams well enough to recognize in a crowd of them. The thought comes, and goes, as quick as a breeze; it doesn’t stand a chance to her focus on Naruto and his clenched fists.
For a moment, he seems to have regained a semblance of chill, but he loses it completely when an especially detailed Oni slides across their path on something that makes sparks fly into the air. This seems to be the last straw for Naruto, as he pulls her into his arms and shuffles them hastily into a shadowed corner with a few curses bitten off.
As Naruto tucks his face against her neck and focuses on his breathing, Hinata tries to remember how to breathe at all. She wraps her arms around him, pulls him in close, and rubs consolingly at his back. His hands clutch at her jacket, his head ducked low, and she can feel his lips brush up against her throat.
A few stragglers pass them by, barely even noticing them tucked away in their corner, even when that same Oni slides by again and lights their corner up with in a flash of light. Naruto doesn’t react at all, except to relax a little against her hold. She whispers in his ear, nearly cooing, trying everything she knows to soothe his nerves.
She doesn’t know how long they stand huddled together, or how many people pass them by, or if that Oni is sliding by them on purpose, before she feels Naruto’s lips on her throat again. She thinks he’s finally got his breathing under control, and might be close to working his way back to standing.
Instead, his lips press against her skin a little more intently, first just once, then again, and her heart stutters in her chest like the brief lapse before an explosion.
Her lips part around his name, maybe a question, maybe encouragement, when his tongue trails over her skin and his lips press down and begin to suck.
This, Hinata thinks instantly, is something she fears. She has no idea what to do with her hands, or if she should acknowledge this gesture at all—that Naruto has gone from near-breakdown comfort cuddles to intently sucking a hickey on her neck in moments.
A simple gasp escapes her lips when his hands move from her back to her hips, and his teeth graze lightly over her raised skin. He peppers a few kisses there even as someone screams bloody murder a few panels away from them, causing Hinata to jump. Her senses are sparking, too scattered to land on any one thing for too long, but she thinks she feels him smile against her skin.
When she feels his lips move down to her collarbone, just slightly revealed under her jacket, she wonders dizzily if this is some sort of coping mechanism she never knew he had. She goes so far as to ask him this exact question, ignoring the flash in her peripheral vision and the snarling of the Oni, who seems a constant fixture in this situation. She knows, she just knows that when she looks back on this memory with some level of confused happiness, that that damned Oni will be in it, too.
“Possibly,” Naruto laughs; he laughs, sounding as carefree as can be. “I hadn’t known before now, but this could be a kind of coping mechanism in the future.”
Hinata isn’t going to touch the possibilities of that statement with a ten-foot pole. Instead, she asks, “What is it, then?”
“Probably the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.”
Before she can even ask him what that means, he pulls back and she can see the gleam of his bright eyes, and in the flare of the Oni’s sliding sparks, the curl of a fond smile. Her cheeks are on fire, the heat spreading down her throat and throbbing in the hickey he undoubtedly left behind. Her heart races happily in her chest, heavy enough to incite her to lean forward, towards him, her hands coming to rest on his chest.
“Hey,” he whispers, and she can barely hear him over the sounds of pseudo-murder just a stone’s throw away. “Can I kiss you?”
“Yes,” she says, before her brain has even caught up. Then again, with the same level of certainty. “Yes.”
When Naruto’s lips meet hers, her eyes slide shut and flashes of light and color flare over her eyelids.
She isn’t certain, it might’ve just been that damned Oni and his repetitive sliding act, throwing sparks, but there’s a possibility, however slight, that when their lips met, she actually saw stars.
✧
“Were you really afraid?” Hinata asks later, when she and Naruto have made it out of the maze and back to their group, safe and sound; with only a few extra kiss marks on both of them to show for their time there. Naruto turns to her with eyes wide, expression incredulous.
“Oh, don’t make me admit it.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” she promises, grinning.
Naruto grumbles, kicking at a stone underfoot. She squeezes his fingers a little, still struck with wonder that they’re holding hands at all—that they’d made out in a haunted maze for the better half of the night. “I can’t fake bein’ that scared.”
“I probably wasn’t the best buddy to stifle your fear,” she admits, laughing a little. “I’m not really afraid of these things, you know.”
“Oh,” Naruto laughs, shaking his head. He ignores the glares Kiba keeps shooting his way in the same way he’s being ignoring how Shino has pointedly lowered his shades down his nose to give their hands a keen, slightly hostile focus for the latter half of the night. “You were the best buddy. Believe it!”
Hinata flushes just about every shade of red she’s got in her arsenal, and knocks her hips lightly against his in embarrassment.
“Naruto-kun!”
“Well it’s true!” he sings blithely, swinging their arms. “I’ve been waiting for the right moment to kiss you for forever.”
Ino, from out of nowhere, appears at Naruto’s elbow with a huff. Sakura is suddenly on Hinata’s other side, looking far too smug for her own good.
The rest of their group seemed to have made it out of the maze relatively unscathed, though they explained to Hinata in hushed tones that Kiba had to hold Shino’s hand all the way through, and also for about an hour afterwards. Choji brought snacks, so his fears for the night aren’t too bad, and Shikamaru snuck a pocket flashlight into the festival, ‘just in case.’ Everyone else seems to just be having fun being afraid, with nothing much getting in the way of that simple plan.
“And you thought,” Ino begins, raising her voice to be heard over the startling, moaning music playing in the stall on their left, “that your first kiss with Hinata should be in a haunted maze?”
“Awful choice,” Sakura laments, casting Hinata a sympathetic look. Hinata merely laughs.
“No way, it was awesome!” Naruto argues, stubborn as ever. “She was totally taking care of me in there, rubbing my back and whispering sweet nothings in my ear and everything.”
This, it seems, is juicy enough to make Hinata’s two friends pause and cast curious, impressed looks her way. Her entire face feels aflame, and she barely resists the urge to bring her hands up to her cheeks.
“They weren’t sweet nothings,” she protests, utterly embarrassed.
Naruto snorts, not helping in the slightest. “They were kinda sweet nothings, Hinata.”
“Oh my God,” Sakura laughs, “they sound like a married couple already.”
“They do,” Ino remarks, as a small child runs screaming past them, followed closely by what appears to be her parents, bone-weary with exhaustion. “This is adorable. I take it back, maybe the haunted maze was a sweet move.”
“Too bad no one witnessed the kiss, though.” Sakura groans, shaking her head. “We’ve all been waiting forever.”
Hinata’s eyes widen, even as Naruto grumbles, “Oh there was a witness alright. Shitty Oni voyeur.”
“Oni?” Ino begins, before bursting into laughter. “Someone working the maze?”
“I don’t,” Naruto begins pointedly, “want to talk about them.”
He shivers, as if the mere memory of the Oni is enough to rekindle all of his earlier fear, and pulls Hinata closer in response. He doesn’t seem to mind when Ino and Sakura laugh at him, or call him ridiculous. He barely even reacts when Ino calls him a baby, and says he’ll need to be coddled every time this festival rolls around. Rather than argue with that, he seems to wholeheartedly agree.
“Can’t wait for next year,” he smirks, and turns his dazzling, mischievous eyes directly on Hinata. “Right, Hinata?”
Hinata swallows, and finds herself ignoring the sound of her friends’ laughter, too. It’s easy to ignore, especially with the moans and groans of monsters all around her. The moon makes an appearance for the first time since their night has started, carving a way through the cloud cover and sliding over them with icy resolution. Hinata shivers, steps closer to Naruto, and feels immediately warmed when he pulls her completely against his chest.
She nods once into the material of his jacket, turning her beaming smile to the rest of the on-looking Rookies, baited with curiosity, and simply says, “Right.”