By Your Side (Kiba One-Shot)

“Come on Sasuke,” Ally pleaded. “Come with me to the ramen shop, please? It could be like a date!”

“No,” was his one worded answer, as usual. He tried to quicken his pace and lose her. He didn’t feel like confronting her today. He just wanted to go off and be alone, maybe do some training. But, his patience was wearing thin. Like Sakura and Ino weren’t bad enough!

“Pretty please?” Ally persisted. She had caught him walking home, and she wasn’t about to let him go so easily. She had been crushing on him since the second grade. She shoved aside a stray strand of her long black hair and looked up at him through her deep brown eyes, trying flutter her eyelashes like all the movie stars do in the movies.

“No.” He brushed her aside as he turned a corner. Dang! None of the tricks from all those magazines were working on him. What a rip off!

“My treat.” The magazines always told her the same thing. Be persistent! Some guys were just too shy to really tell women how they felt; sometimes the women had to be the brave ones.

Sasuke turned and looked at her. “How many times do I have to say no before you understand? No, no, no!” with that he turned and kept walking, leaving Ally alone, hurt, and sad.

Ally couldn’t believe it. She had been rejected by Sasuke yet again- not that it should be a surprise anymore, but it still hurt nonetheless. Everyday it seemed to get worse, and she wondered what she should do.

She ran, ran as fast as her legs would carry her to her favorite spot in a small meadow deep in the woods and cried. Within minutes someone had sat next to her and slipped his arm around her shoulders to comfort her.

Ally sniffed, “Thanks Kiba.” She leaned into him, taking in his earthy scent. He smelled of comfort and friendship.

“He said no again, didn’t he?” he guessed, always the insightful one. He knew her better than she knew herself. Akamaru jumped into Ally’s lap and licked at her face. Ally absently stroked his fur.

“Yes, and I even offered to pay and everything,” she cried into his chest, the tears pouring out like a leaky faucet.

He stroked her hair. “It’ll look up; you just wait.”

The next day, Kiba and Ally were training on the training grounds, both working on Tai-Jutsu, as they did everyday since they had been kids. They were best friends, and they had been since the day Ally moved in next door to Kiba when they were 5.

Ally had been exploring and found Akamaru playing on his own in a small stream. She befriended the canine and played with him often. When Kiba gone looking for Akamaru, he found him playing with Ally. They had become inseparable since that day. Now, Kiba was still her best friend, the one she told everything. He was her shoulder to cry on.

Kiba knew so much about her, he could blackmail her if he wanted. He knew her biggest crush was Sasuke Uchiha, and her favorite color was green. He knew she hated fish, and that she loved steak.

“Hey, Ally,” he started as he ducked from one of her kicks. He wasn’t sure how to ask, but from experience, he knew to just spit it out.

“What?” she asked as she flipped backwards for some distance and bent her knees in a defensive position.

“Do you want to-” but he was caught off.

“Sasuke!” she squealed as she rushed off over to him without a second thought to Kiba.

Kiba sighed and watched from a distance.

“Sasuke,” Ally cried. She caught up to him. “I’m having some problems with my homework. Will you help me? We could make it a study date.”

“No,” Sasuke replied with his infamous one-worded answer. It was hard for Kiba to even imagine the guy in a relationship. How would he be able to hold up a conversation?

“But, I really need your help,” her lower lip quivered and her eyes shined with tears that threatened to fall. But, she wouldn’t let Sasuke see her crying. She knew he hated signs of weakness.

“Ask the teachers for help. It’s what they are there for,” he said as he pushed passed her, but Ally stepped in front of him with such swiftness, he was caught off guard.

“But, you could teach me better than they could. They use too big of words.”

“No,” he walked passed her.

Ally stood there and watched him walk away. Kiba walked up to her and pulled her into a hug. She held him tight as she wept into his chest.

Kiba was her rock. She told him everything. Heck, she didn’t think there was something about her he didn’t know. She was very open with her feelings around him.

What she couldn’t understand was why Sasuke didn’t like her. Was she trying too hard? What if she played hard to get? No, that never worked for her. She couldn’t get that part down. Did Sasuke think that Kiba and her were dating? Was that the reason? Maybe he didn’t want to make her choose between them. The solution: she would just have to distance herself from Kiba for a while.

“Thanks Kiba,” she said as rubbed the tears from her eyes. “I think I‘m going to go home.”

“Okay. I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” he nodded, knowing not to press her, to give her space to think.

“Sure,” she forced a smile, afraid and ashamed of what she was going to do. She hated herself for it, knowing it was mean.

The weeks that followed, Ally avoided Kiba as much as she could. He never questioned her about it. He was just so understanding, which made it that much harder for Ally. She wanted him to yell at her, to question her motives, but that just wasn’t Kiba. He knew her so well that he probably knew why she was acting like a child. Ally needed some kind of confrontation from him, but he was giving her none.

Kiba knew in the back of his mind that she was avoiding him right away. What he didn’t know until a few days later was why. She thought that Sasuke thought the two were dating. He had figured it out when, if Sasuke was in the room, Ally would sit as far away from Kiba as possible. But, if Sasuke wasn’t in the room, she’d at least nod at Kiba, give some kind of acknowledgement that she knew he was there.

Kiba played along. He hoped this wouldn’t last very long, that it was just some dumb phase she was going through. When a month passed with no progress, he made a decision: he was going to talk to Sasuke.

So he waited until after school one day to do it. ”Sasuke,” he called. “Got a minute?” He had caught the Uchiha coming out of the gym.

“Hn,” Sasuke replied, but stopped and waited.

Kiba took it as a yes and continued, “Look, Sasuke, I’ll just come right out and say it; no small talk.”

“Hn.”

“I know you know Ally has a crush on you. You’d have to be pretty blind not to see it.”

“Hn.”

“Well, would you please just give her a chance?”

“And, why would I do that?” Sasuke seemed to be getting more than a little irritated, but Kiba didn’t blame him. Kiba probably wasn’t going about it quite right.

“Because, she’s a great girl. She’s funny, smart, and the kindest person you’ll ever meet. You’d be lucky to be with someone like her.”

“You sound like you’re the one who likes her.”

Kiba hesitated. “I do like her.”

“Then, why go to all this trouble? Why not tell her how you feel?”

“She doesn’t like me like that. She loves you. She’s been avoiding me for the past month because she thinks you won’t ask her out because you think we are dating.”

“So, you want me to date her so she’ll talk to you again.”

“Yes.”

Sasuke gave him a hard look. “Why are doing this if you love her so much?”

“Love means caring for someone and making them happy. As long as she’s happy, that’s all that matters.”

“What about your happiness?”

“If I have to sacrifice my happiness for hers, I would do so gladly.”

Ally walked home by herself just as she had everyday for the past month. She was lonely, and she hated it. She really missed Kiba. It was more than just wanting his company. It was much more than that. She felt like she would die if she never saw him again.

She promised herself she would go apologize to him after her homework was done, but she had been saying the same thing for the past two weeks. She just didn’t know what to say or how to say it.

She turned a corner and was face to face with Sasuke. “Oh, Sasuke, you scared me.”

“You want to go out with me?” he asked, Ally didn‘t even take in that he was looking anywhere but at her face.

Ally was rooted to the spot. “What?” She ran her hand through her long locks of black hair.

“Do you want to or not?” Sasuke’s irritation flared up. If he was going to do this, she couldn’t be this dimwitted.

“Huh? Oh, yes. Yes.”

“Ramen shop tonight at 7:00.” With that he left.

Ally rushed to Kiba’s. “Kiba! I’m so sorry about avoiding you, but it paid off! Sasuke asked me out! Isn’t it great?”

Kiba cast his eyes to the ground and tried to sound cheerful. “Ya, great.”

When Ally arrived at the ramen shop, Sasuke was already there. She sat down in the chair next to him.

“You look cute Sasuke,” she said. He was in his regular everyday clothes.

He never looked at her but mumbled, “You too.”

After they ordered Ally talked away. All she could talk about was how close she and Kiba were. Sasuke looked like he could have cared less. He just sat there staring off into space.

Later, Sasuke and Ally were walking home.

“Sasuke, why do I get the feeling you don’t want to be here?” She asked as they approached her house. A part of her had noticed it right away, but the other part- the bigger part- hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it.

He didn’t say anything.

“If you didn’t want to go out with me, then why did you?” She wanted to cry, out of embarrassment for thinking Sasuke actually liked her or out of exasperation- she didn’t know.

“Inuzuka asked me to,” he answered after a moment, carefully thinking about whether or not he should tell the truth. The guy hadn’t made it clear he had wanted to be anonymous.

“Kiba? Why would he do that?”

“How dense can you be? Even Naruto can tell he’s madly in love with you. He only asked me to ask you out so you’d talk to him again, oh and for you to be happy, or something along those lines.”

“Kiba did all this for me?”

Sasuke didn’t answer.

“So, you don’t like me?”

Sasuke shook his head. “No.”

With that Ally took off running. Again.

Kiba was sitting in the secret meadow. It was his and Ally’s. They came here when they were sad. And somehow, the other always seemed to materialize right when the other really needed them. He didn’t know what he had hoped to accomplish by coming there. Maybe to secretly wish for Ally to appear.

Kiba heard the bushes rustling. He stood up. Out came Ally. She was crying, again.

“Ally!” Kiba took a step towards her. If that Uchiha punk had hurt her in anyway, he would kill him. Kiba would do it with his bare hands and feel dang good about it.

She flew herself into him and kissed him hard on the lips. Kiba was taken aback- not sure how to respond. He didn’t want to come across as too strong.

“Kiba, I’m so sorry!” she sobbed. “I love you. There I said it. I love you. I don’t even deserve you, but I love you too much to lose you.”

Kiba leaned down and covered her lips with his. “What took you so long?”.

*Ok, this isn't my best work as I wrote this a long time ago*