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She felt horrible that she was afraid of something that her friend loved so dearly. Kiba was easy; Akamaru was adorable and cuddly were bugs just…weren't.
They were small and creepy and they got everywhere and they were just terrifying.
It started when, she was very young, and her sister had thought it would be funny to place too many spiders to count in her bed so when she pulled back her covers for the night her bed was infested with them. Her father had belittled her for screaming; it wasn't very Hyuga to scream in fear.
Ever since that moment all manner of creepy crawlies were just that. They crept, and they crawled, and she wanted nothing to do with them.
It didn't affect her life too much to become noteworthy, her sister was too old to want to play with bugs now and despite the odd moment where she would encounter them in her garden she didn't see enough.
But then the Genin teams were announced.
Overnight, she saw giant swarms of Shinos insects every single day and everyday uncomfortable shivers run up her spine and she could taste her breakfast again from her body wanting to vomit in fear.
She thought she was good at hiding it; Shino thought otherwise. He cornered her after practice one day when she was collecting her thrown kunai.
"You're afraid of me."
"W-What?" She stammered clutching the kunai to her chest. "N-No wh-why would yo-you-"
"We aren't going to be able to make this team work if you're afraid of me." He stated as a fact. "So; which is it? The fact that bugs are small? Or have too many eyes? Or carry diseases? Or that they aren't pretty? Which is it?"
The way he rhymed of the potential reasons for her fear so easily brought up images of blank faces yelling insults at him when he was younger the way they did to her about her eyes and her heart seemed to fall through some hole into her stomach in shame.
And she didn't even really know why she was afraid of them; they were just-they were just-
"They're just cr-creepy."
Where her emotions were, sometimes unfortunately, open for all to read; Shinos were locked up tight behind that huge collar and heavily tinted sunglasses.
The silence went on and on and Hinata wished she were anywhere else in the world apart from standing there unintentionally insulting everything that made up her teammate.
"I don't-" Her foot trailed the ground in an attempt to get rid of some of the nervous energy she had. "–I don't want to be sc-scared of them."
More silence, and with it brought more nervous energy swirling in her being.
"Could I-" She gulped "-could I see one?"
He lifted his hand a few moments later and she flinched.
"I'm not going to hurt you."
"I kn-know that." And she did, Shino had never been anything but courteous to her.
"I'm going to let one of my beetles onto my finger; it's not going to touch you and it's not going to hurt you."
His words sounded so scripted; how many people had he done this with to convince them bugs weren't creepy awful things?
He raised his hand and she saw one of his bugs appear from out of the sleeve of his coat and the tell-tale shiver ran down her spine.
But after a few minutes, the individual bug on his finger seemed to crawl over his hand without a care and on its own, not when it was part of a deadly swarm, it didn't seem half as scary.
She took a deep breath to calm her nerves, she was going to be brave.
"Can I-can I hold it?"
He didn't do anything apart from slowly move his outstretched finger to her. When she held out her two palms cupped the bug crawled onto her hands and, surprising both of them, she giggled.
"It's tickly-y!" She laughed again as she fidgeted when the beetle continued over her palm.
When the bug flew off her hand to land on his shoulder a few minutes later she thought of something. She took a hold of one of his hands in both of hers. She gasped lightly; she could feel them under his skin! She told him as such and Shino merely nodded.
"Is-is this what it fe-feels like all the ti-time?"
There was a beat of silence before he replied, his voice taking on a dark and miserable tone.
"It's worse."
That made Hinata frown and grip his hand tighter. Maybe, for all the time he spent trying to persuade other people bugs weren't ugly disgusting creatures…maybe he needed someone to convince him of the same.
She couldn't find the right words to comfort the boy in front of her; she could only tell him what being able to feel his bugs move under his skin felt like. "It's relaxing."
As his head lowered she could see his eyebrows pull together in confusion.
"Your bugs. Under your sk-skin. It fe-feels relaxing." She smiled sweetly. "Like a gentle massage."
They stood like that for what felt like forever. Hinata simply holding his hand and being lulled into a state of almost peace by the beetles moving about in their host.
His free hand came up to rest on hers, lightly, like she would disappear.
"Thank you Hinata." She smiled and thanked him back.
Shino wasn't anything to fear; and neither were his bugs it seemed.