A/N; This has no Beta.
Disclaimer; All rights belong, and are reserved to Kishimoto, and/or their respective owners. I do not own anything Naruto related.
I will take my leave
xXx
Waking early in the morning had always been a difficult task for me, one of the few things in life that eluded me. I could pretence to be a shinobi all I wanted, but the regimented sleep schedule of my promotion, I struggled with. Often 4.30am became 5am, 5.30...6.30...6.45, and in my younger days my mother would appear in the screeching wail of banshee and pull the covers away from me, threatening all sorts of stringent punishment, if I did not move, right now.
I also realised, right now, that by the warmth filtering through my heavy, un-opened eyelids it couldn't be all that early...or in my vague and muddled tiredness that the bed I was in...was indeed mine...or the smell of lavender and peaches...and mint...and flowers overwhelmingly, certainly weren't ones that belonged to my room.
Ah. Here again.
As if by design, in answer, I felt her diminutive weight lift from the space next to me and cross the room. I wasn't going to open my eyes, I wasn't yet ready to face the shame. I had promised myself, we had promised ourselves more like, that this was not going to happen again. I heard my own sigh at the admission that it had.
The shower in her en-suite had begun to run, the pipes in the wall over-head bulked and stirred with the effort. She would not be long. Despite her vainness, or perhaps because of it I had become familiar with the notion that Ino had a routine that (excluding breakfast) was all but twenty minutes in length, and she would still come out looking flawless, the envy of many other women.
I chanced rolling over to check the time and that was when it hit me... Fuck.
The searing ache of my head, the beating pain in my arms, legs, back, too much encrusted sleep in my eyes - which I mechanically wiped at and hurt even more for it. Yup, I was hungover. Not the worst of hangovers, I'd certainly had more woeful efforts over the years, but not exactly convenient when I had a Summit to attend at twelve. I opened one eye glancing at the alarm clock on her neatly-ordered night stand. 8.00am...plenty of time to stomach a minor hangover, fortunately.
She appeared in the doorway then, and could tell I was no longer sleeping - so, there was really escaping it. She was clothed in only a towel, and a toothbrush in her hand - but still looking like the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. The premise of most one nightstands would be to slip away unnoticed, as quickly and quietly as one could... but me and Ino...It wasn't just a meaningless single night tryst - we had no awkwardness about it, instead an insufferable familiarity, infused with too much history and meaning for two people to ever have, if they weren't allowed utimately, to be together.
"Morning,"
"Morning,"
"Did,.. we -?"
"No,"
Her response was edged with a cold indifference - it had to be. If either of us were to succumb we'd be jumping into one great big hole of shattered expectations, of clan duties and crossing boundaries and of hurt feelings. No one knew about this, not even Choji. Still, as much as relief flooded over me I couldn't help but be stung by how impassive she sounded. We had shared many things over the years, and a bed on more than one occasion, but I always struggled with the detachment, afterwards. For all my own indifferences and stoicness I showed the world, I cared deeply for others - as did she.
Ino retreated back into the bathroom, determined for me not to interrupt her concise routine. I was glad we had not had sex, the cords I was attempting to slowly to cut at, had not been allowed to re-grow and strengthen again, but I inwardly panicked at the fact I had still ended up here, after trying so hard to distance myself over the past few weeks. Ino had remained my source of comfort and belonging. A belated image of me wrapping my arm around her waist in the middle of the night, and burying my face in the crook of her neck, flashed before me as I picked up my shirt off the floor, followed horribly by blinding pain from the heachache.
Damn you, Naruto, he was a bad influence.
Ino came back into the bedroom, still wrapped in a towel and we passed each other as easily as strangers passed in the street. She began rummaging around in her underwear drawer.
"Don't have a summit today?"
"Yeah,"
I knew, in Ino-fashion she was beginning a slow descent to shoo me out the door. Much more agonizing and heavy than an all out rejection, but I could admit - only to myself, that the smallest of joys touched me at spending just a few more minutes with her. I excused myself to politely take a piss while she got dressed, because I wasn't going to be afforded the privilege of watching anymore.
As I walked in the small closeted bathroom and yawned, I became aware at how parched my mouth was - spying the small purple toothbrush, she had been using earlier, my fingers outstretched for it - but, I caught myself, suddenly. The Shikamaru of a few weeks ago wouldn't have even thought about the action as holding any significance, but this was the Shikamaru who was no longer swapping bodily fluids with Ino Yamanaka...there something unbidden to me about it now.
I settled for swilling my mouth out with water instead.
When I was done in the bathroom, Ino was already in the other room, her open-plan living and kitchen area of the small compact apartment above her family flower shop. I could hear her making hurried last minute arrangements to leave. I silently wondered whether she was truly running later than she wanted to be, or if my very presence was driving her away. Regardless, I sat on the end of her once-amiable bed and tugged my sandals on, before following suit and doing the same. A feeling was humming and building within and all around me, in the moment. A walk of shame was less complicating and much less painful than what was about the transpire.
Ino was already waiting by the door when I walked through, as I knew she would be. Her eyes flickered from my face across the room, and for the briefest second - to the kitchen cupboards, in assurance and in permission. I knew my way around the kitchen cupboards as well as I knew my way around the apartment, and of course - Ino's bed. But her severe look told me she wanted me gone, straight after, this time.
"Make sure you lock the door behind you,"
I'd be spending my hours pre-summit, in my own bed, it seemed.
She didn't linger, or give any further instruction, but gifted me a parting austere-glance. If I hadn't already been preparing myself for it, I felt certain the look would have crushed me.
I sat down gingerly on a stool at the breakfast bar, and began rolling a cigarette - my hangover, thankfully beginning to lift with the forced movement of my body. I looked around at the high ceilings and the clean floors - and taking in all the things that made the place uniquely Ino. The miniature cacti littering the windowsill, the souvenir magnets on the fridge holding up pictures drew by admiring children at the academy; too many cushions for comfort on the compact couch and very bright rugs on the laminate. Various nail varnish, lipstick and magazines strewn across the coffee table - remnants of nights spent with Sakura. Ino was a woman who was both immaculate and messy, and I held great affection for it. I was so utterly at home here. But...Ino had made her decision.
I had read it in the cuttingly platonic way she held herself around me now - even though, I could tell - it was obviously forced, our bodies knew eachother too well. I could feel it in the indifference, turned up a notch since we stopped sleeping together, her cyan eyes refusing to meet my own - not properly anyway, not in the way that Ino Yamanaka could bare through people's soul with magnificent perception, they were supposed to see right through you and really make you feel. I sighed. Not anymore, not for me.
At the top of her fridge lay too many cereals for one person to own, but I wasn't interested - a cigarette for breakfast would suffice. Although she had allowed it, she'd done it out of politeness really, so there was no point in crossing another boundary she did not want me to.
All my hopes and dreams of another life lay here, a life where we were free of the constraints of our clans, where power and allegiances did not matter. Where I would be able to love and marry a woman of my choosing, in fact the woman of my choosing. I knew, I would have picked her a million times over if I could.
My hand hovered by the door-handle as I took one last look around, committing exactly the way everything looked, to perfect memory. This was the last time I'd be visiting, in such a position - so, I made doubly sure the door was locked behind me.
A/N; Another one-shot that didn't really have place in the multi-chaperted fic I am currently writing. I am still working on a life time of memories, so don't worry...I'm a little stuck, so writing other things, helps. Reviews are lovely, thank you :)