A Handful of Maybes

The fire crackles upon the wood, and its yellow embers dance on their skin as she leans on him in exhaustion, the back of his jacket scratching against the rough bark. They had never trained like this before, bygone the day to welcome the thrall of the night; they are tired and breathless but strangely, never before so alive.

She closes her eyes to rest them for a moment, but the moment is cut short when she feels a heated palm ghosting over hers. A flush blooms on her cheeks, a drop of blood in a bowl of milk, and she sits up abruptly.

"Hinata-chan," he began, but she cannot seem to look at him. "Something wrong?"

"I... K-Kiba-kun... you..." She had not stammered like that around him since their Genin years, and she wonders what had changed. "Y-your hand..."

She peeks at him through the curtains of her hair. Something flits about his face, but then it is gone and he only sighs, laying his head on the tree trunk.

"Sorry if it bothered you," he exhales, staring at the vein of stars beyond the canopy of leaves above them. "I... just thought I'd try it, just once."

Confusion etches into her worn expression as her stomach churned, slightly. "W-What do you m-mean, K-Kiba-kun?"

He raises a brow dubiously, the curves of his mouth tilted. "You mean you don't know?"

She shakes her head, and tries to resist the urge to fiddle with her fingertips, a habit she thought she had lost long ago.

"Honestly no clue?"

She swallows nervously through her lie. A smudge of understanding stirs in her mind, though she hopes that she isn't right.

Kiba chuckles dryly. "And they told me I was too obvious."

"T-They?"

"Hmm? Ah, yeah. Well, there's Shino, and Kurenai-sensei and those people... then there's my sister, then pretty much all the girls... and a few of the guys we hang out with. Shika, Choji, Lee, and even Neji, godsakes." He shrugs, folding his arms. "I guess that's all those who matter."

She shivers, though the flame is burning just brightly as it did before. "I-I'm s-sorry, Kiba-kun, but I d-don't understand..."

He sighs again, peering at her curiously. "Do you really, Hinata? I mean, even Naruto, for a thick-headed rascal, saw it too."

She flinches at that name, her longing evident in the tremor that shakes her frame.

"I see. You still like him at lot, don't you, Hinata-chan?"

Her eyes widen as she inhales sharply. "H-How did you k-know, K-Kiba-kun?"

He runs a hand through his hair, a bitter laugh escaping his lips. "You don't keep secrets too well, Hinata-chan. Just from the only one who really ought to know, but I guess that's something we have in common."

She glances over her shoulder, and suddenly he is close, much too close, a rueful smile ghosting over his wild features.

"K-Kiba-kun, I don't..."

"If it's not already clear, Hinata-chan, I really, really like you." He had always been so blunt and painfully open that it's a miracle he hasn't said it before. "No, scratch that. I kind of love you something awful, actually."

She never thought herself too good with admitting confessions, and she finds out she's the same with accepting them too.

She opens her mouth, but chokes on her reply. He actually has to pound into her back when he notices that she isn't exaggerating.

She regains control of her lungs, and little tears leak from the corners of her pale eyes.

"Relax, Hinata-chan. It's not like I expect anything out of you; I've always just been dying to tell you, somehow... but I never felt like blurting it out 'til now." He was still absently rubbing circles just beneath her shoulder blades. The tenderness with which he was doing it made the blush that never left grow a few shades darker.

Mustering an inkling of bravado, because it was all that she had, she lets her eyes sweep over his face. His hair was the wrong color, and his grin a bit more feral than those of the one that caressed her dreams, but there was something there that she never saw on Naruto, fantasy or not.

Kiba was not the kind to love only to a certain extent. She had always admired him for his strength, because loving so wholeheartedly would surely take its toll on him, and she is overwhelmed by the fact that whatever she does next would decide what becomes of his happiness.

"Well?" He questions, now placing distance between them. "Don't be so quiet, Hinata-chan. There's no one else to talk to."

The raw tension that buzzed in the air lifts, as if the exchange never happened, and she realizes he might have taken her silence as a no.

But maybe it isn't, because she reaches for him, one palm supporting her weight and knees dusty from the earthen ground. He pauses, surprise lighting up his features, but he does not pull away from her heated palm which was now atop his.

"You're not always this confusing, Hinata-chan," he comments, the faintest humor tainting his voice.

And she didn't really know why she said what she did, or did what she's saying now, but she speaks it nonetheless.

"I can try this, Kiba-kun." She watches as gladness imprints itself upon the sudden swell of his mouth, canines bared cheekily to accompany his dimples. And there was nothing to regret.

His arms approach her, and she does not protest when he nuzzles into her neck, sniffing her hair. Her hands are trapped against his chest, but because of it she can feel the erratic pounding of his heart under the fabric, and it's comforting.

For the first time he does not jump or scream or, at the very least, yell, to express his joy. He contents himself to smiling against her ear, and to whispering, "Thank you, Hinata-chan."

She nods, settling into the embrace, fully aware that he was not Naruto-kun, and that he never will be. But Kiba is here, and he is warm and gentle and he loves her something awful; so perhaps there is nothing else she can ask for, especially if she maybe-loves him too.