Published on March 8, 2019
Approximately 2,010 words
TRICKS OVER TREATS
He washed his hair, face, body (with a ginger touch around his still sore ribs), and jerked off. He had gotten out of the shower while it ran lukewarm and then sat at the edge of his bed, still dripping wet, and stared off at the wall.
The clock read 12:15.
His appointment was always at 12.
He was usually late by 50 minutes to an hour.
He had arrived at 12:32 the week before.
He sighed heavily. He fought the urge to shiver and cursed the poor heating. The wet spot on his unmade bed grew when he laid down. He felt every spring in the mattress and every fiber of the scratchy blanket. The digital clock projected the time onto the ceiling, it appeared as the faintest of red marks in the daylight brightened room.
When the clock read 12:21, he stood up.
The crumpled towel on the ground felt damp from it's use the night previous. His body was almost air dried, he only rubbed down his hair and face. He rifled through his drawer and reached the very bottom of the unfolded, wrinkled clothes to pull out the purple shirt he'd worn with Team Taka. He held it up to his chest and frowned. It was too short and too tight.
He tossed it back in and pulled out an undamaged long sleeve shirt. Konoha's uniform.
He ate and loitered around his apartment until 12:31. With the sun beating down on his shoulders, he navigated through the alleys and narrow side roads of the village, mind reeling with all the possible scenarios he could arrive to. His heart rate fluttered minutely, his palms grew clammy, and his footsteps got quicker.
He shook his head and put on a believable sneer.
'Fucking pathetic,' he told himself.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, forced his pace down to a meandering stroll, and took deep breaths.
Inside the automatic glass doors, he was cloaked in the scent of flowers for the dying, sterile linen, and chemical cleaning solution. The tiny amount of tension in his shoulders went slack against his will. His expression twisted further.
"Does he need to lug that sword around?" one of the desk attendants whispered to her colleague.
He perked up as he passed them.
"Probably, he's one of them shinobi-types..."
His eyes snapped to the receptionists. He flashed them a pointy grin and took a gratuitous glance at their chests. He saw them shrink away and whisper low enough that he couldn't hear behind their hands.
The spark of anger in his core grew to a flame. It morphed into something pleasurable. Something reaffirming.
He walked the familiar hallway with a straight back, his fists clenched at his side.
TRICKS OVER TREATS
The textbooks in her arms were heavy enough to warrant the use of chakra. She slid Anatomy of the Eye into it's place on the shelf. Next to it sat Anomalies of the Iris and The Development of Astigmatism. Each tome had a generous layer of dust. She made a mental note to speak to the head custodian about it. Someone had been too lazy to dust the shelves above and below eye level for quite a while.
She shoved another book into it's empty space and paused.
She heard a distant tapping. Footsteps?
There was no chakra signature in the hall. Not that she could sense, at least. She paused for a beat. No other sounds followed the first. The clock on the wall read 12:43. She shook her head and continued her task. Why he bothered to mask his chakra was beyond her.
The doorknob turned sharply, and she didn't look to see who entered.
"Hozuki," she drawled.
"Haruno," he responded.
The door clicked shut behind him. He hovered close to her, then turned. His smelled of cold air, generic soap, and metal. His chakra trailed after him, calm as a gently rolling tide. A far cry from the chaos it had been at their appointment the week previous.
He unstrapped his sword and leaned it against the wall. She refrained from scolding him, and just hoped that the gargantuan hunk of metal wouldn't fall or damage her hardwood floor. He took her chair again, and lazily swung back and forth in it. She felt his gaze land on her figure just as she shoved the last book in its place. She swiped her hand across her skirt to rid the dust and turned to face him.
He obnoxiously rifled through her prescription pad. She took it from him with a quick hand.
"Don't go through my desk," she ordered.
He quirked an eyebrow, his usual menacing grin in place. She set the pad down on the corner of the desk and sat in the chair across from him. It wasn't the reaction he wanted, clearly. His face was a touch too tight, and his hand on the table was strained to remain flat.
He snatched it back in the blink of an eye. Her face remained stoney as she evaluated him. He gave it a brief glance, let out a conniving chuckle and threw the pad in front of her. It landed with a clap. A pen rolled towards her after it.
"Give me something fun," he demanded.
Her gaze lowered.
He leaned forward in her chair, arms crossed on the desk.
She filled it out without complaint.
She felt his eyes on her hand. He watched every character she etched into the carbonated page. He glared at her with confusion and suspicion. She paused with her pen poised over the dotted line meant for the name of the drug.
"Well?" she prompted. His lip twitched. "I'm waiting."
"...You'll write me a ticket for what I want?"
She raised her eyebrows. "It's called a prescription, not a ticket. Would you like something for pain, or maybe sleep? We just restocked our Ambien supply. Xanax, Percocet, and Valium are other popular medications."
He didn't answer, his mouth paused halfway through a word.
There was her chance to attack.
While his mind was caught up in the choices she'd provided and the complete shock of her compliance, he was vulnerable. She saw it in his unguarded expression and the soft lines of his face. Her questions bubbled in the back of her throat and she fought the victorious grin that threatened to surface. She leaned closer to him, and stared right into the violet depths of his eyes. A flash of recognition emerged in his eyes, he knew he'd been snared in her trap.
Her words came out rapid and sharp.
"Last week you arrived early to your appointment and you came to get me in the lab. You didn't smile when you saw me and your chakra was disturbed. Were you experiencing a flashback?"
He was still stunned. His mouth snapped shut. The grin disappeared. His hands curled into fists, knuckles white.
Chakra rolled off him in waves. In an instant, she felt everything about his chakra. From the sea foam edges, to the frigid shadows. She felt it in her teeth, it reverberated off her very bones and shook up her blood. In another instant, he bottled it all up and shoved the violent disruption down within himself.
That was all she needed to know that her theory was correct.
Triumph licked through her body. She suppressed a smile and stared back, the picture of professional stoicism. Slowly, she leaned back in her chair and firmly planted her hands on the armrests. Patients like him were treated like one would a large animal. With deliberate, slow movement, and actions just short of submission.
The right side of his cheek hollowed. His chin moved slightly. He had bit down hard on the inside of his cheek.
She pushed on.
"After we came back up to my office you seemed more closed off than usual. Bored or disappointed maybe. Had you misjudged your own reaction to an environment similar to your flashbacks? Is that why you arrived at 12:45 instead of 12:30 today, just incase something similar happened?"
His lips pulled into a snarl and he glowered at her. She saw the blood on his teeth.
For a terrifying second, she thought he'd lunge for her with his bare hands. She forced herself not to flinch when he simply leaned back in her chair and shot her what was meant to be a smile. It looked more like an animal baring it's teeth to intimidate its prey.
"Yes. I had a fucking flashback," he ground out, then paused. "... and it wasn't that bad."
She nodded. He averted his gaze to focus onto the nearly complete prescription. A soft dose of regret flickered in her heart, but she shoved it down, and victory took it's place. She readjusted her grip on the pen and gestured to the pad.
"I want xanax, babe. 30 bars worth," he told her. His voice was smooth as silk and showed none of the anger that she knew was tamped down within.
She filled out his request without reprimand. It was his payment in exchange for that sliver of information. She signed the page and ripped off the yellow copy.
"Here you are. Don't lose it."
He shoved it into his pocket without folding it. She didn't expect a thank you from him, and she didn't get it. She put the pad back in it's spot by her lamp. She tucked the pen back into it's cup. He followed her every movement, but he didn't notice that all the previous prescriptions had their white copies removed. She ignored the giddy airiness in her belly and forced her lips into a passive line.
TRICKS OVER TREATS
"Open your mouth," she instructed.
Her body heat sunk through his clothes and warmed his right arm. She leaned against his side of the desk and faced him. Her hand was outstretched as she waited for his compliance. Without taking her easy innuendo material, he opened up.
Her eyes narrowed. Out of shock, revulsion, or annoyance he wasn't sure. He knew there was blood pooled in his gums from the shredded skin in the side of his cheek. He could taste it, coppery, strong, and nostalgic on his tongue and in the back of his throat.
She braced his face with her hand, her thumb on his chin kept his mouth propped open as she swabbed the blood away.
He was tempted to clamp down on her dainty little fingers when they reached all the way to the back of his mouth. Just to give her a fright, to make her jump. It would be easy. He wanted to see her back away from him, eyes wide and lips trembling. He didn't though. Partly because the minty cool feeling of her chakra felt good on his throbbing mouth, and partly because of the way she sat on the desk. Her skirt was slightly hiked and it revealed a narrow strip of milky white flesh above her stockings.
"Do you find yourself chewing on your cheek often? Particularly in stressful or dangerous situations? Or situations that remind you of past trauma?" she asked.
Her voice above sounded more like a hum than words. It all blended together in his head. He noticed the way each word made her delicate tendons shift under the skin of her neck. He let his gaze trail up to her forehead, to the purple seal.
"Sometimes."
"Did you do this last week in the lab?"
"I dunno."
Her silence was thoughtful. She took her hand off his face and with it her heat. His hands tightened around the arms of the chair to stay still. She rounded the desk to sit down. He body was half turned away from him. She looked at him over a deceptively thin shoulder, her legs crossed politely to the side.
He firmly ignored the memory of her exposed skin. Involuntarily, his knee started to bounce under the desk.
"We'll have to work on that then," she broke the quiet.
TRICKS OVER TREATS
Author's Note: So we've reached the second chapter! Not gonna lie, I struggled a lot with this for some reason. Before I published the first chapter I thought I had three chapters worth of content already written. Then I went back to edit and realized it didn't match the first chapter in style whatsoever, and I cut a handful of scenes because they didn't add much. I'll rework them somehow. I'm trying to focus on a semi-minimalistic show-don't-tell style. Hopefully some details won't be too obscure. I didn't exactly set up the status quo that well, so it might be difficult to spot where they diverge from the norm, especially for Suigetsu.
(And I'm not sure if I should commit to this, but expect updates every weekend, or every other weekend)