קгєץ 🕷 [ⲛⲁⲅⳙⲏⳕⲛⲁ]

Rebel At Heart

Chapter Thirteen

Rebel At Heart

✧༶☽-ˋˏHιɳαƚαˎˊ-☾༶✧

March 24, 2012

Twisting the lid from the palm sized container in hand, Hinata gave the cold, creamy contents a cursory sniff, hoping its overnight stay in her fridge hadn't diluted the scent she'd worked so hard to engineer last night. Her eyes slid closed as she inhaled, a pleasant combination of earthy vetiver, an elusive hybrid woodsy-ish aroma and a subtle underlying of wintergreen filling her senses.

Perfect.

Her careful brewing and creative oil combining had paid off.

As soon as she got home from work yesterday, she'd changed into her dingy product mixing clothes and started working on the concoction, determined to have it perfected and ready by tomorrow afternoon. This was the first time she'd made salve specifically for a man, presenting a unique problem for her. The ones she made for herself were more in line with her strawberry-and-cream scented bath soap.

Feminine. Sweet. Girly.

Nothing most men would want to smell like.

Finding the right combination of scented oils for a more manly scent had been a bit tough.

Many of the oils and medicinal properties were strong in their own right, overshadowing the masculine aroma she'd had in mind. After two failures at the stove, she'd finally found the right balance that brought the smoky, woodsy aroma to the forefront of the medical cream.

Smiling triumphantly, she twisted the lid back on.

Now...

Now she had to actually give it to him...

Face heating, Hinata pressed the cheap, but sturdy metal container she'd bought from a nearby discount store to put his salve in, against her foolishly pound heart.

Honestly...

There was no reason for her to be so nervous, nor any justification for the butterflies fluttering in her belly.

She shook her head as though the action alone could scatter the anxious tickles, inhaling a calming breath when that didn't work. She was being silly. All she was doing was giving him ointment, nothing overly grand or particularly meaningful on it's surface.

And yet...

To her, this whole thing felt more significant than that...

Like she was stepping over some undefined line that would force her to stop and really acknowledge what was brewing inside her.

Something she couldn't mask as simple curiosity of a unusual customer.

Standing in the middle of her little kitchen, she could admit the truth to herself.

Despite her stuttering protests to Kiba and the rest of the teasing Teuchi's crew, Hinata was well aware of the fact that she was crushing on the scarred veteran, and while giving him a container of salve wasn't exactly a confession letter, she did feel like they were crossing over into more personal territory with this exchange.

That this interaction would tighten another notch on the invisible teether connected between her and the blonde man, dragging her closer to the clutches of his tattooed hands.

She'd been skating the edges of his grasp since the moment he spoke to her.

Dancing out of reach of his blatant interest, keeping him at a distance with professionalism and politeness.