"If I didn't know you better, I would say you were pissed off." Kiba stated, tilting his head to the side and narrowing his eyes at Shino in a peculiarly doglike movement. Shino could feel his eyebrow twitch as he leaned against the tree off to the side of the training grounds. The small glade smelled damp and earthy, with the lower soft flavor of Hyuuga Chakra sizzling on his tongue.

Kiba was closer suddenly, and Shino blinked behind his glasses, glancing at the odd splay of dark freckles over the other young man's nose before calmly pushing him back with two fingers against forehead. "I'm fine." He said softly, mouth barely moving as he let his hand drop back into his lap.

Kiba huffed, a noise that Akamaru echoed before tossing Shino a distinctively Kiba look. Shino closed his eyes, there was too much of the raucous boy in his field of vision; Kiba was terribly distracting. He unfolded slightly, pushing the heels of his feet into the mossy ground and tilted his chin up to look through the branches at the sky.

He wasn't stupid. He'd seen the way Kiba reacted around the small dainty Hyuuga girl. He'd noticed the slimming space between their bodies when they spoke, and how Kiba's eyes seemed to track her as she walked in the small toe heel steps to sit near them. Shino knew when a dog was tracking it's quarry. He knew better than to get in the way. Kiba had always been more subtle than anyone gave him credit for and Shino could only swallow quietly as Kiba's forearms corded as he stretched next to him.

He'd always liked the patterns of scars there, like kanji spelling out the wild story of Kiba's childhood. It wasn't like the scars on his own arms. Those read like punctuation, the quiet spaces that brought a story to it's end. Shino had always felt more than half finished, closer to the end of his story than he liked to admit.

He understood that for a happily ever after to happen, boy had to meet girl. Happy endings never came for boy met boy.

Kiba had exploded into his life with a flurry of fur, fangs, cursing and fists. Shino had felt shaken to the core, like still waters upset by the introduction of a volcano. He was always shifting to allow Kiba more room and flowing around him to keep him safe.

He'd been seven, quiet and pale under the boughs of the local forest, touching his palms against the smooth bark of a poplar tree. No one in his family spoke loudly, almost communicating in odd humming gestures and meaningful silences, the whisper of a dragonfly wings in an empty room. Shino himself had not uttered a word until he could speak a full sentence. The moon is hanging from the branches of Pine.

Kiba had sounded like the explosion of fireworks yowling through the forest and Shino had frozen like a deer, wary and small against the shadows. If it was possible for another person to look like a wild thing, then Kiba managed it. Shino, who was used to the fine willow china elegance of his own clan's small houses deep in the forest, felt shattered by the feral dirty boy with leaves in his hair and a chipped tooth. He'd stood slowly and he'd been circled, dark slitted eyes curious as Kiba nosed at him. He almost smiles at the memory that he'd been sure Kiba would eat him.

Now he sits in the glade, trying to be invisible as Kiba leans his torso back, but pushes his feet to touch lightly at the fabric of Hinata's pants. The irony is too strong that only now does he truly want to be devoured.

Kiba talks around him, from over his shoulder and across his thighs. Shino knows he's just a pleasantry. When Kiba focuses it's singlemindedly terrifying. But for all his claws and fangs, sharp rasping voice and wild hair, Shino knows his hands are gentle. He knows for two reasons: Akamaru could not love a boy with hard violent hands that had no room for soft loving caresses, and the slight tremble he'd felt when Kiba had first seen all of his scars. He'd turned his back, shrugging out of his long sleeved shirt and frozen, breath caught as Kiba's fingers glanced wonderingly across the puckering pockmarked skin over his spine. He doesn't know what the other boy said, just clings to the feel of that hot breath gone soft in wonder. Shino knows that Kiba is only quiet when he's curious.

When he's alone in the forest, back against a tree just like this, thighs parted as his fingers stroke over his cock he never thinks of that moment. It's too important, too personal. He needs that moment pure. He thinks of how Kiba pants with pleasure when he tackles Shino to the ground. The way Kiba flops over his shoulders, chin digging into his collar as he yammers at Kurenai after practice. He thinks of the wide face splitting grin as Kiba strips naked in the sun and dives to flop about in the lake, slick and shimmering. He never does more than sigh, eyes tight with need as he comes. Shino has always been quiet.

"Silence is survival." Shino's grandmother had said once, touching a branch hung with a spider's web. She'd looked back at Shino with the bright blue rheumetic eyes. She'd been blind for years, but she always knew where Shino was. So he was silent, not empty.

He could count on one hand the months until Kiba had squirmed his way beneath the quiet shyness the girl to his right exuded. He could count the breaths he would keep pushing in and out of his lungs after the long lingering looks turned to outright adoration and the slight pink color of desire. Shino couldn't blame the other boy, she really did blush beautifully.

He would sit patiently as Kiba sprawled across the dark cobalt sheets of his bed, hands stroking over his own tanned hard stomach as he spoke of how Hinata had touched him. He would tell Shino the way she trembled under him and how he'd felt so strong, how he wanted to cover and blanket the seemingly cold white skin. He could almost see the way they'd make love, with soft fluttering white fingers against that strong tan back and the slow roll of Kiba's hips as he was so gentle. So gentle, no small nips, just the soft growling groans of her name, almost a sigh even spoken normally. Her voice would sound like windchimes in a storm, tinkling out the way he made her feel.

Shino would spiral outward from this moment. Just this moment right now with Kiba on his left and Hinata to his right. He'd slowly fade into the singular path of his clan, working alone with only the sharp prickling feel of the kikachuu swarming out of him. He'd kill silently and pray for the day he could truly tell Kiba how important he was. How he needed the loud laughter and the touch to keep him from fading away like a cicada's song in winter.

"Hey, you sure you're okay?" And Kiba was close again, breaking out of the laughing conversation with Hinata to settle his chin on Shino's shoulder and study him thoughtfully.

"If I smile would you believe me?" Shino asked quietly, keeping his eyes closed, already knowing just how the other boy looked.

"Naw, then I'd really know something was wrong."

"You know me too well." Shino breathed.

"Only what you tell me, Shino. Only what you tell me." Kiba laughed, bumping his forehead against Shino's shoulder quickly before turning back to Hinata.

Shino resolved to one day find the right words.

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