Chapter Text
The apartment on Maple Street had never been meant for two people.
It was a cramped one-bedroom with a kitchen so narrow you couldn’t open the oven and the refrigerator at the same time, a living room that doubled as a dining room that doubled as a hallway, and a bathroom with a shower that growled like an angry dog every time you turned the hot water on. The bedroom was just large enough for a full-sized mattress and a desk that pressed against the window, leaving exactly six inches of clearance to squeeze past.
But it was theirs.
Neji had claimed the right side of the bed three years ago, back when they were both eighteen and terrified and pretending they weren’t. Tenten had taken the left. Somewhere between freshman orientation and their first shared cup of instant ramen at 2AM, the arrangement had stopped being temporary and started being the only thing that made sense.
He knew the shrill, insistent beeping of her alarm clock that she always snoozed at least twice. He knew the way she left her hair ties on the bathroom counter no matter how many times he moved them to the drawer. He knew that she preferred almond milk in her coffee but would drink it black if they were out, and that she hummed off-key when she was concentrating, and that when she had nightmares (which were much rarer now than they used to be) she would reach across the bed in her sleep until her fingers found his wrist, and then she would breathe easier.
He knew all of this and more.
He knew that he was in love with her.
He had known it for three years, one month, and approximately twelve days, not that he was counting. He had stopped counting somewhere around the two-year mark, when the feeling had stopped feeling like something new and started feeling like the air in his lungs.
The problem was not that he loved her, the problem was that he had never told her.
The morning light came through the kitchen window that made dust motes look like floating stars.
Neji stood at the stove, watching a pan of eggs solidify around the edges. His hair was still damp from the shower, falling across his forehead in uneven strands. He was wearing an old gray hoodie and sweatpants, what he wore on Sunday mornings like this one when neither of them had anywhere to be.
Behind him, Tenten was making coffee.
He could hear her moving through the kitchen with the ease of someone who had memorized every creaking floorboard and every cabinet that stuck. The grinder whirred. Water sloshed into the reservoir. The coffee maker beeped three times, a sound that always reminded him of a spaceship landing.
“You’re burning them again,” she said.
Neji looked down. The eggs were, in fact, beginning to brown at the edges.
He swore under his breath and scraped them onto two plates, leaving the darker ones for himself. Tenten appeared at his elbow, her hair piled into a messy bun, a pair of chopsticks already in her hand. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt that might have been his once, he couldn’t remember anymore. Everything they owned had blurred together somewhere around the second year.
“Salt?” she asked.
“On the counter.”
She found it, sprinkled too much onto her eggs, and settled onto the stool across from him. The kitchen was so small that their knees always touched under the tiny counter that separated the stove from the table.
For a while, there was only the sound of chopsticks against ceramic and the soft gurgle of the coffee maker finishing its cycle.
Then Tenten said, “Lee asked me to get dinner with him on Friday.”
Neji’s chopsticks stopped moving.
He was very careful not to let his expression change. He had practiced the art of keeping his face still when his chest felt like it was caving in. He had gotten very good at it over the last three years.
“Lee,” he repeated. His voice sounded normal. He thought.
“Yeah.” She was looking at her plate, not at him. Her chopsticks were tracing patterns in the egg yolk, drawing little swirls that meant nothing. “Like, as a date. I think. He was pretty clear about it.”
Neji remembered the first time he had met Lee. It was the second week of freshman year, and Lee had run into their dormitory common room shouting about the power of youth and had somehow convinced fifteen strangers to join an impromptu relay race across campus. Tenten had been one of them. She had come back sweaty and laughing, her ponytail askew, and she had said, “That guy is exhausting. I love him.”
Neji had known, even then, that Lee was everything he was not.
Loud where Neji was quiet, open where Neji was guarded. The kind of person who said exactly what he was feeling because he had never learned that there were things worth hiding.
“That’s nice,” Neji said.
Tenten looked up. Her eyes weren’t just brown, they were a warm, honeyed brown that caught the morning light and held it. She was studying him with an expression he couldn’t quite read.
“Really?” she asked.
“Should it not be?”
She shrugged, looking back down at her eggs. “I don’t know. I just thought—” She stopped and shook her head. “Never mind.”
Neji wanted to ask what she had thought. He wanted to reach across the counter and take her hand and tell her that he had been in love with her for three years, one month, and twelve days, and that the thought of her going on a date with Lee made him want to disappear.
Instead, he ate his burned eggs and said, “I hope you have a good time.”
The week that followed was strange. Not obviously so as there was nothing dramatic enough to point at and name, but the rhythm of their apartment ever so slightly shifted, like a song played in the wrong key.
Tenten started spending more time in her room. She left the door open, always, but she was on her phone more often, her thumb scrolling through messages from someone who wasn’t him. She laughed at her screen in a way that made something twist in Neji’s chest.
On Tuesday, she asked if he would mind if Lee came over to study.
On Wednesday, Lee came over to study.
Neji had never hated the word study more than he did at that moment.
He stayed in his room for most of the evening, ostensibly working on a problem set for his algorithms class. THe walls were thin and he could hear Lee’s booming laugh through the drywall, and Tenten’s quieter one in response, and the shuffle of feet across the living room floor as they moved from the couch to the kitchen and back again.
At some point there was a knock on his door.
“Hey,” Tenten said, poking her head in. Her cheeks were flushed, probably from laughing. “We’re ordering pizza. You want some?”
Lee appeared behind her, waving enthusiastically. “Neji! You should join us! We were just discussing the philosophical implications of pineapple on pizza. I believe it is a symbol of rebellion against culinary tradition, but Tenten argues—”
“I’m fine,” Neji said. “I have work.”
Tenten’s smile flickered. “You’ve been in here for hours.”
“I have a lot of work.”
She held his gaze for a moment and it was long enough for him to almost change his mind. Then she nodded and closed the door.
He heard her footsteps retreating. He heard Lee say something that made her laugh again.
He stared at his algorithms homework until the numbers blurred together and stopped meaning anything.
Thursday was the worst. Not because anything bad happened. That was the problem. Nothing happened. Tenten went to class, Neji went to class. They passed each other in the hallway on their way to the kitchen, exchanged the usual pleasantries, and retreated to their separate corners.
The silence between them was not angry or cold. It was something worse.
It was careful, like they were both walking on glass and afraid of the sound it would make if it broke.
Neji lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling, and listened to the sound of Tenten sleeping on the other side of the bed. She was asleep, he could tell by the soft, even, rhythm of it. He had memorized the way she breathed years ago, back when the sound was the only thing that could pull him out of his own spiraling thoughts.
She’s going on a date with Lee tomorrow, he thought.
The sentence played on a loop in his head, each repetition a little louder than the last.
She’s going on a date with Lee tomorrow.
He thought about how Lee would pick her up. He thought about how she would probably wear that blue sweater that made her eyes look darker, and how she would put on lip gloss even though she always said she hated the way it felt. He thought about how Lee would hold the door open for her, and how she would smile at him, and how Lee, who was so loud, open, and unafraid, would tell her exactly what she was thinking.
Lee would not lie in bed at night, alone, practicing conversations he was too afraid to have.
Lee would just have them. Neji turned on his side and closed his eyes. He did not sleep.
On Friday, Tenten got ready in the bathroom with the door closed.
This was unusual. Normally, she did her makeup in the mirror above their dresser while talking to him through a mouthful of bobby pins as she wrestled her hair into submission. But tonight, the door was shut, and all he could hear was the muffled sound of the hair dryer and the occasional clink of something ceramic against the sink.
He sat on the edge of the bed, pretending to read a textbook.
When she came out, she was wearing the blue sweater.
Neji’s breath caught somewhere in his throat, and he had to look down at his book to hide it.
“How do I look?” she asked.
He forced himself to look up. Her hair wasn’t in buns or braids or any of the elaborate styles she usually wore, but was down and loose, falling past her shoulders in soft waves. She had done something to her eyes, something with eyeliner that made them look wider, brighter. The blue sweater was soft and worn at the cuffs, and it made her look like she belonged in a painting.
“You look nice,” he said.
It was not enough. It was not nearly enough. He wanted to say beautiful or stunning or please don’t go or I’ve been in love with you since the first time you laughed at one of my jokes and I realized I would do anything to make you laugh again.
But he said, “You look nice.”
Tenten looked at him for a long moment. Her expression was hard to read but was somewhere between hopeful and resigned, like she was waiting for something she had stopped expecting to arrive.
“Thanks,” she said.
The doorbell rang.
Lee’s bright and enthusiastic voice carried through the apartment, even through the wood. Tenten smiled a real smile, not the careful one she had been giving Neji all week, and grabbed her purse from the hook by the door.
“Don’t wait up,” she called over her shoulder.
The door closed. The apartment was silent.
Neji sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, staring at nothing. Eventually, he moved to the living room couch, pulled a blanket over his shoulders, and stared at the television without turning it on. He did not know what he was waiting for, he just knew that the apartment felt wrong without her in it.
She came home at eleven-thirty. Neji was still on the couch, pretending to watch a movie he had not been paying attention to for the last two hours. He heard her key in the lock, heard the door open and close, and heard the soft thud of her boots being kicked off by the mat.
She appeared in the doorway of the living room, still wearing the blue sweater. Her lip gloss was gone. Her hair was slightly disheveled, like she had been running her hands through it.
“How was it?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Fine.”
Just fine.
Neji wanted to ask what that meant, but he was afraid of the answer. He was always afraid of the answer.
“He kissed me,” she said.
The words landed like stones in still water.
Neji’s hands curled into fists under the blanket. He kept his face neutral. He had practiced this.
“Oh,” he said.
“He kissed me, and I—” She stopped. She was looking at him with that unreadable expression again, the one that made him feel like she was trying to solve a puzzle he did not know he had created. “I didn’t feel anything.”
Neji’s heart stopped.
“No,” he said carefully, “I mean, it’s Lee. He’s—”
“It’s not about Lee,” she interrupted. She took a step into the room, then stopped, like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to come closer. “It’s about me. I’ve been going on dates and meeting people and trying to feel something, and I don’t. I never do.”
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, very softly, “The only time I feel anything is when I’m here.”
Neji’s throat was dry. He wanted to say something. He wanted to stand up and cross the room and take her face in his hands and tell her that he felt everything, all the time, every second of the day, and that it was exhausting and terrifying and the most beautiful thing he had ever experienced.
Instead, he said, “You should get some sleep.”
Tenten stared at him. For just a moment, her expression cracked. Something raw and hurt flickered across her face, there and gone so fast he almost thought he had imagined it.
“Yeah,” she said. “Goodnight, Neji.”
She turned and walked to the bedroom.
He heard the door close. It wasn’t slammed, just closed. It sounded louder than it should have.