Kindred

A/N: You’re going to be pissed after reading this. There’s more buildup but we won’t get to the actual pillow talk for some time. If you’re still with me, thank you.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Gods, this one needs a schematic! Neji thought to himself. Without saying a word, Neji unbuckled the belt of Shikamaru’s trousers. A stunned and tipsy Nara said nothing until he realized the Hyuuga wasn’t planning to stop there. When the button on Shikamaru’s trousers was released, the Nara’s hands flew to Neji’s wrists to stop him.

“Neji, what are you doing?!” The Nara’s heart was thumping so loud he could hardly hear anything else.

“Making my point,” was Neji’s calm response.

Shikamaru shoved Neji’s hands away roughly, but Neji didn’t back off. “Try making your point with your own pants, Hyuuga.”

“Fine”, Neji quickly countered, grabbing the Nara’s hand at the wrist to place it over the Hyuuga’s erection. The sensation of hardened flesh beneath clothing shocked the Nara. He tried to pull his hand away, but Neji roughly rubbed it over his erection before releasing it.

Shikamaru simply stared at Neji, surprise evident on his face. “What the fuck, Neji?”

“Gods, Shikamaru, do I have to draw you a diagram? That,” Neji told him, placing his hand on the Nara’s own clothed erection, “was about this.” Neji squeezed the burgeoning thing for measure. Shikamaru had been outed, and was now embarrassed beyond description.

“Shit”, Shikamaru hissed.

Neji leaned into Shikamaru’s body, rubbing and squeezing that erection. He could smell the Nara’s scent mixed with the scent of junmai-shu and it was making Neji harder by the second. Shikamaru clenched his fists, resisting the urge to cover his face with his hands.

“You liked it”, Neji stated in that voice, modified to become an even sexier thing.

Shikamaru couldn’t look Neji in the eye, and couldn’t respond. At the moment he could hardly form a coherent thought. They were alone together in Neji’s home, half in the bag and hard as stone, with Neji using one of those deadly hands of his to grope him without mercy. It was too much.

“Huh?” Shikamaru grunted, letting his eyes close.

“That man chose you, Shikamaru. He followed you, and then he offered himself to you shamelessly. He wanted you so badly he jerked himself off right in front of you in the men’s restroom of a three-star restaurant.” Shikamaru could see the scene all over again in his mind. Neji, his sexy voice and that hand--that very skilled hand--were breaking the Nara down. He had nowhere to hide.

“You liked him, didn’t you?” Neji asked.

Upon hearing this, the Nara’s eyes flew open. “No!” Even though the walls of guilt and shame and, Gods avail him, lust were quickly closing in on Shikamaru, he didn’t want the Hyuuga to believe he’d chosen someone over him. Shikamaru tried to tell him, but the words wouldn’t come. “Neji, I—it wasn’t—I-I didn’t—“

Neji rubbed him, squeezed him again, and any further attempt to explain died in the Nara’s throat. “Did you watch him come?” was Neji’s next gambit.

“Stop it.” Shikamaru could hardly endure more of the sound of that lusty voice.

“What did it make you want to do, Nara? Did it make you want to fuck him?”

“Neji, stop!”

Neji was advancing on the Nara with a determined look etched into his porcelain countenance. Shikamaru was not aware he was moving backward until his back hit the wall and Neji trapped him there, one arm braced against the wall on one side of the Nara’s head, the other with its hand taking indecent liberties with the Nara’s clothed erection, his body leaning in so close they were sharing breaths. Shikamaru was having trouble breathing. Neji’s pale eyes bore into his own.

“I won’t stop”, Neji told him in that sexy voice. “I won’t stop until you own up to liking men, and then…” In an even more daring move, Neji bent and licked the shell of the Nara’s ear, “I won’t stop until I’ve made you mine.”

Shikamaru’s eyes went wide and the breath left his lungs. Did you just say you want me? Did you just say—

Neji’s next move was the undoing of them both. He gave in to his compulsion to taste the Nara, gently pressing his lips into his. Eyes fluttered shut. Neji licked the seam of Shikamaru’s lips, tasting while at the same time asking permission. Shikamaru’s answer was to open his lips and draw that tongue inside with his own. The sake tasted so good this way! Galvanized by Shikamaru’s concession, Neji reached for the zipper on the Nara’s trousers, tugging it down to reveal Shikamaru’s straining boxers, and slipped his hand into their opening.

The sudden flesh-to-flesh contact between the Nara’s large aching erection and Neji’s hand caused Shikamaru to moan into Neji’s mouth. The Hyuuga chuckled, breaking the kiss.

“Don’t be shy, Nara.” Neji grabbed the Nara’s hand and placed it on the waistband of his trousers. “Touch mine too.”

Shikamaru’s moves were tentative. He was with Neji. His Neji. And they were making out. The Nara could hardly believe Neji wanted him the way he wanted Neji, but it was happening. Suddenly Shikamaru wanted on his knees in front of the Hyuuga with his mouth around Neji’s cock. He didn’t really understand why he wanted it that way and not the other way around, but he wasn’t going to talk himself out of it.

Shikamaru’s moves became more deliberate. In the meantime the Hyuuga was busy feasting on the Nara’s neck and frantically working his hand around a cock so big and hard its twitching threatened to rip the boxers confining it. “Gods, Nara, you’re a beast.”

The next thing Shikamaru felt was his hair being freed from its tie and deft fingers rummaging through his thick, wavy locks. He leaned back into the hand massaging his scalp.

“You like this”, Neji breathed.

Shikamaru said nothing. Neji’s hands were sending him into subspace. Neji tugged a bit on the Nara’s hair. Shikamaru’s hands on the Hyuuga’s trousers stilled.

“Answer me, Shikamaru Nara. You like this, don’t you?”

Shikamaru gulped between pants. “Fucking hell do you think, Hyuuga?”

Neji liked that response. He wanted to unleash all of Shikamaru’s passion. Neji smiled and crushed his lips to the Nara’s. Gone was the gentleness of their first kiss. Shikamaru could taste blood.

Shikamaru broke the kiss and pulled his hands away from the Hyuuga’s pants, reached for the hands in his hair and pants and freed himself from them. He couldn’t step back from Neji and Neji wouldn’t give him any room. He stared at Neji, panting, his body doused in sweat that smelled of sake, his hair a wild halo around his head and shoulders. His cock was angry in his pants. The time for teasing was over.

“If you’re done trying to jack me off, we should go to bed.”

Neji smirked. “All in good time. I want answers first.” Neji began unbuttoning the rest of the buttons on Shikamaru’s still damp shirt. “Why were you acting so homophobic before?”

The Nara blinked. Neji wanted coherent responses now? His cock was doing a gymnastic floor routine in his pants, no way! He searched his mind. “I-I’m not a homophobe, all right? I was just afraid you would reject our partnership.”

“After all this time? For what? Watching a guy beat off to you in a public bathroom? Do you think I’m a homophobe?”

“Neji,” Shikamaru responded, “No. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before. I didn’t know how to respond.”

“Because you liked it”, was the Hyuuga’s assessment.

The Nara sighed. Neji dragged the unbuttoned shirt free of Shikamaru’s trousers. Shikamaru lifted his arms to allow Neji to pull them free of the sleeves. Neji then tossed the shirt to the side. “Yes.”

“Because you liked him”, Neji continued. He ran his hands along the ridges and planes of Shikamaru’s chest and abs, paying particular attention to those dark, pebbled nipples. The Nara was so warm, and smelled so good. It was driving Neji crazy.

“No, Neji.”

The Hyuuga took a nipple and pinched it between his fingertips. The Nara hissed. “You’re lying to me, Nara.” Another pinch, another hiss. “You stood in that bathroom with that man and watched him stroke himself, and you’re trying to tell me that you didn’t find him attractive? How does that work, Nara? Tell me.”

“I-I, yes, I thought he was good-looking but I didn’t want him, not like you—aaaah—think”, the Nara bit out. Neji’s hands on his body were making thinking nearly impossible. When Neji’s fingers began ghosting along Shikamaru’s sides, he had to pull them away. He could barely stand it.

“Neji,” the Nara began, taking the fingers of one hand between his lips and licking them, “that man was a complete stranger to me, and do you know what he did? He risked rejection, public humiliation, and yes, jail time to reveal his feelings for me.” Shikamaru ran the tip of his tongue along Neji’s longest finger and into the palm of his hand, and Neji gasped. “Now, as trifling as it all was, he showed me, in that act, just how much of a coward I’d been.” Now it was Neji’s turn to be speechless, as the Nara pushed his tongue into the palm of the Hyuuga’s hand. Shikamaru could taste his own essence on Neji’s skin.

“I’ve been running from myself. My feelings were not something I wanted to deal with. My sexuality was troublesome. But tonight I came face to face with all of it. And all I could think about is what that might mean to our partnership.” Shikamaru sighed. “I just don’t want to lose you.”

“Why did you think I wouldn’t understand?” Neji asked the Nara.

“I didn’t think you would want this. I didn’t know you wanted us.” Shikamaru wound his arms around the Hyuuga’s trim waist, his fingers toying with the bind at the end of Neji’s long hair. He still couldn’t believe they were here, together like this.

“Well, to be honest, I didn’t either until the blond made that offer to us as we were leaving.” Neji ran his tongue along the Nara’s neck to his naked shoulder, tasting his salty skin.

Shikamaru smirked. “You know, that was an unusual reaction from you. I figured you punched the guy because he thought you were a bottom.”

Neji shrugged. “I did.”

The Nara chuckled. “Neji—“

Neji lifted his head then. “I also did it because I thought you’d find him less tempting if he weren’t so pretty.”

Shikamaru smirked. That had to be a joke. “I would never have chosen him over you. Not in a million years. I don’t think anyone would have.”

“He got to claim your virtue. I was jealous.”

If it were possible the Nara’s heartbeat sped up more. Neji? Jealous? Twenty-four hours ago, Shikamaru would never have conceived of Neji feeling jealousy over anything. Hearing him utter those words, it was too much.

“You were right about one thing, Nara.” The Hyuuga teased the earring in the Nara’s ear with his tongue. “When you told that woman I wouldn’t share you…I’m very protective of what is mine, you see.” Neji’s lips ghosted along Shikamaru’s in an almost-kiss.

“I’m yours, am I?” Shikamaru asked in the huskiest voice he’d ever heard himself use.

“Just as I have told you.” Neji stepped back and took the Nara’s hand. “And now I’m going to show you.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

A/N:

Okay, better…but we’re not there yet. These guys are trying to work out two years of repressed emotion, cut them a little slack why don’t you?

Please review!