Rock Lee is kind of like the sun.
He’s warm. Even on the rare occasion that he hasn’t trained, his palms remain sweaty, his body constantly at a higher than normal temperature. Sometimes the heat and passion that Lee exceeds wears off on himself. It’s almost annoying, the way he gets dragged into something he wouldn’t typically do and ends up more worn-out than he’s comfortable with. Neji finds that if he stands to close to someone like Lee, his face gets hot.
He’s bright. Neji isn’t sure how he’s able to smile so much and not have his cheeks cramp up. When Neji began to come out of his shell, he found that smiling for more than thirty seconds at a time was a harder workout than most of his training. It’s hard to look at him straight in the face when he gets like that. It’s almost overwhelming, the pure joy his teammate is able to radiate.
Sometimes, Neji thinks, it’s not fair for him to stare. It’s not fair for someone like him to be able to bask in something so warm.
He finds Lee annoying at times, just like the sun is when you wake up to it cracking through your blinds and shining directly into your eyes—unnecessarily dazzling in the early hours. Yet despite the annoyance, he’s never able to harbor any hatred. The idea of hating the sun is nearly funny.
Sometimes, Neji finds himself, in a way, looking forward to seeing Lee. Like the sun finally coming up after weeks of dull, gloomy weather outside. The first crack of sun after of long winter that washes away the cold snow and replaces it with something warmer. Every time Neji feels himself drowning in some sort of darkness, his teammate manages to drag him out of that stupor. Not by brute force that came associated with his rough Taijutsu—but by something subtle and gentle.
He can’t understand Lee. Neji can’t begin to piece together any of those strange, articulate feelings linked to his annoyingly bright teammate.
That’s why, to Neji, Lee is the sun.
Neji Hyuga is kind of like the moon.
Rock Lee gets a little chilly whenever Nejis within close proximity. Despite popular belief, it isn’t his teammates cold attitude that causes it. It’s how unbelievably cold Neji is to the touch. He finds that if he stands to close, he gets a chill of something akin to admiration. Not on the level of his Sensei, but something close to it. Tender in a way he can’t wrap his head around.
Neji is mysterious. There’s lots of things Lee knows about his rival, he could list hundreds of things about him. He could almost boast how much he knew about him—a handful of knowledge other people didn’t know. Yet, it felt he only knew the surface of it. If Neji was the moon, he wondered, what was on the dark side of it? There were so many things Lee knew about Neji. But there were hundreds of things he didn’t.
Neji’s silent, and yet with the little words he does say—he’s wise. Every time Lee can’t wrap his head around something he can’t understand—or he can’t find the right words to say, Neji seems to know what he’s thinking anyway. Most of the time, Lee doesn’t need to say a single word before Neji steps in and tells him what it is.
It’s not judgmental, nor humiliating as some people see it—it’s straightforward. Lee appreciates that in his rival. Whenever he’s lost, Neji guides him without so much as an extra breath wasted.
It’s like those late night jogs Lee takes, the only thing that guides him home and prevents him from getting lost is the moon—even in its silence.
Neji’s beautiful. It’s not a strange thought, there were always whispers on the street about how handsome and cool his teammates was. He always heard them when they returned from a mission—walking side by side. It only took a glance toward his teammate to understand what the people saw in him. He found that his complexion—his eyes, were nearly a perfect match to the moon.
Even though people would whisper, Neji never paid them any mind. Rather, he would keep his focus on Lee and whatever it was he would babble on about.
He figured if Neji was the moon, then the crowd of people talking about him were the ocean. Lee only one of the many tides that were pulled in.
Lee couldn’t understand how his rival worked. His outer beauty was something highly spoken about, it was something he could agree with without a second thought. But it was the small, gentle moments that only the two of them shared that stuck with Lee—that made his rapid beating heart soothe with something calming. A complexing, over-exaggerated thought to something so mundane, that only Lee could think of.
That’s why, to Lee, Neji is the moon.