Summary: (This is how to drink your hypocrisy down, how to become enamoured with your lies, how to live in your own skins.) This is how to love a monster.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Number three of five. Thank you to those who alerted, favourites or reviewed. Now, in reference to the last chapter (hooray!) I did get a stupid comment, but not about the pairing. Rather, someone saying 'How does it feel like reviewing your own work?' and I have to wonder who the hell would do that, bearing in mind it defeats the object of reviewing and secondly he fact that it was anonymous also said a lot, as well as it being grammatically incorrect. Silly people. You are most hilarious. I suppose just because nobody wants to read your classics, you decided to be childish, yes? Most wonderful. Now we have got that over with, I am going to point out my happiness at not getting any other stupid comments and be like 'Guys, seriously, I love you', so thanksies!

Warning(s): Bad language, mentions of M rated stuff, seriously dark at some points.

Skins

mirror kissing,

She is Ino.

She is afraid of more than anyone will ever know. She is worried that her flesh on flesh and vanity complexed ways will turn away and become just another part of the past she doesn't want to relieve. She's sickened by he thought that she's just going to be another example to make the youngest students they teach about the screw ups cry. She's wanting to be more than whatever she is just because she will be the proof left behind that not everybody is happy and that some things just never change.

(She's not as beautiful on the inside, and honest to whatever sheisnotokay!)

And this is just a body.

So she'll fill it with corrosive nectar and watch herself burn out brighter. She'll swear until this day that the only time she actually ever felt alive was when a man chased by demons ran his fingers up her cagey ribs with his the right side of wrinkled slept in clothes being torn away to reveal nothing but whatever he really was.

She's as fucked as they come when he tries to smooth out her edges. But he is just a broken bird of a boy who says he isn't a masochist although he likes her, and she is just a sharp eyed empty girl who in-between the lines on every new notebook at midnight writes oh God he's so beautiful. But only at first. Only at first.

Her hip bones are like knives and they tear at his flesh, stab him whilst he etches his body into hers that once. And it's only then; when he's broken down and as useless and pathetic as she ever was, that she likes to think every so often that he was the loneliest man in the world to ever turn to somebody that likes to destroy.

She is Ino, and she is human. Because she tears things down.

This is how to feel sick.

"Who are you?"

There has been a downpour all day, and she can't bring herself to look in the messy puddle mirrors she jumped in so she could smash them. That way, she thought she wouldn't have to look. There is dirt streaking up her legs and her umbrella is hanging from a tree but she can't hide herself or stare at inanimate objects when he's around. Juugo has sun kissed skin and bloody eyes and she can't help but want to look at him forever.

"I don't know."

She doesn't. But she has an inkling he does. When Shikamaru speaks about her now it feels like she has no idea who they're talking about or if what they are speaking about it true. It's gotten to the point where she avoids them altogether, because she doesn't know what it feels like to have an identity anymore and him reminding her she existed once is like pretending she's not uncomfortable in her own skin.

"How does it feel?"

He asked gingerly. She'll tell him anything just to be complete, so she doesn't know why he's so awkward but she finds it kind of sweet. For him she'd do anything, and it was cliché to say so but nobody ever meant it but her.

"Taste it."

She tells him, pivoting as she spins into him and reaches higher to catch his mouth with her own. Since she was twelve she has had veins full of vanity and sold conformity along with pockets full of enhancements and fakes for little more than smiles. But she's bored with the way the grins make her feel and the way that sometimes she feels utterly alone after all anyway. Except with him.

"You asked me not to love you."

He pulls away, but he grips his hands around her wrists with incredible strength at the same time like he wants to hold her even if it means holding her away. Sometimes, she thinks he's just like her and he's forgotten how to do things again like she did with morning basics like tying her shoes. Or maybe she was over thinking, and the only thing in those super massive red holes that are his eyes show nothing more than what she wants to see in them.

"Don't get me wrong, I don't need you to."

He flinches as she murmurs. She just wants him more than she's ever wanted anybody. His hands gradually slackened their grip, shaking as if wary. He raises his right hand to touch her cheek with a calloused palm, and she can't help but think he's petrified of bending her so far she breaks. She supposes in one way, it's not the bending that will snap her. She's always been two steps away from ordinary, and she's known since long ago that she's used to him but not love. Because this is not love. Nothing like it.

"But what f I need you? What then?"

He asks. She smiles a little too brightly at this. There is always need for her. Everyone always likes to think so. They like to think they can make her a million shades of fixed, except some people got fed up along the way and others just gave up altogether with a sorry like they meant it. But she's so young, and she's always been desperate to have everything. No, this is not love, she reasons. This is a boy and a girl and a man and a woman and nothing. They are just people who want to touch like they know affection instead of just having their elbows knock awkwardly a few centimetres below where their hearts should be. Love has always been a foreign word she can associate with neither of them. He is tragically beautiful and she is beautifully tragic, and the lines can't be blurred. Not this time.

"You don't."

She tells him decisively, capturing his lips again. This time, he can't stop. She supposes he has never known a girl with soft-glowing ice white skin, or little strands of hair sticking to her forehead, or anyone like her. That would explain why his hands were awkward against her back, like he was the teenager. But this is the sort of relationship where he will rise from the forest floor covered in sweat and dirt and sex, and where he's falling asleep next to her and waking up alone.

He can't use it as reasoning later, but he thinks maybe – only just maybe – this is why he has torn everything he fed her from her stomach: he loves her. He likes her long matchstick legs and the way she could be better with weight but probably won't ever be, and he likes her bright blue eyes and her real smile which is fucking killer, he's sure. He is the flame. She is the oil. She will always burn brighter, no matter what.

He thinks this is why he grips her just a little too tight, so tight he can feel her retaliation of nails digging half moons into his back and this is why each of her ribs fits tightly against his chest so sharply, almost like they are leaving imprints. This is why when he presses himself against the slick skin of her stomach, she tugs his hair and this is why when she arches her back he can't stop himself. This is why, he tells himself, a hundred million reasons why other than love.

Then when he wakes up the next day, battered and bruised from the night before with bloody teeth mark cuts on his shoulder blade that he supposes must have cut into her a little too much, and she's not there, he can't reason anymore.

He loves her –helovesherhelovesherhelovesher- and she doesn't know the meaning of the word. But he shakes himself awake and turns to look at the tree behind him, and looks at her invisible handprint from some time ago and can feel her breathing a little too heavily, and knows that just possibly someday he might make her. Even if it hurts. He might prefer her crappy and broken like him, with her little whims seeping into his skin and marking themselves for memory more than she'd ever know, but there's only so much he can take. But unlike everyone else, he's not going to give up. Not this time.

This is how to feel sick. But still, hold your stomach. Nobody else will do it for you.

This is how to shed the skin of belief.

"You left."

He tells her. She doesn't need to reply with the fact she knows. But the statement, he hopes, will be enough to make her react. Instead, she looks up from the counter where she is making pretty things look prettier, and looks at him blankly.

"So I did."

It's not quite a – what did you expect – apology. Or anything for that matter. She's determined to convince him that she's just another messed up girl from that moment, and he can almost taste the bitterness on her lips and every lie she wants to feed him being tucked behind her bed of teeth cosily.

"Don't you ever feel sorry for others?"

He asks her, for the second time, trying not to let his voice crack in pain. He has always been the sensitive man who let himself get dragged along despite his strength. He has always been the one to avoid the pretence of the world they live in. He has always believed in her. But not right then, he doesn't. Not when she looks at him so wordlessly. Like he wouldn't care anyway. Like he wasn't ever anything more than anyone else to her.

"No."

She answers quietly. Why should she feel sorry for those who had turned against her? He didn't even want to hear her say it. He didn't want her to know the way her fingers carved beneath his skin and burned through to his bone, to know the way she pressed herself against him made him feel like she belonged, to know the way she made him feel almost like he could be human too, if only when she was around.

"Then what is this?"

He whispers, watching as she delicately stacks piles of flowers into vases. He'll never know, but she'll burn the heads off each and every one once he's gone. All it takes is a little fire to start her off, and with her there is no stopping. There is no going back. There is no life before her. The worst thing about her is like having her is like having a broken heart, he thinks then. You can't ever remember what it felt like before.

"Something like religion."

She answers. He almost laughs, but he doesn't know how too. He has always been too kind, and she has always been too wicked to accept such a thing from him without consequence. He has always been soft and naïve, and he never believed naivety was a good thing until she told him so, but he finds her words almost true.

"You can give it up."

He finishes for her. She doesn't even nod in reply, but he tries to understand. He is the one who thought her a God. But she has never believed in such a thing. She doesn't have anything but a mirror kissing face and an empty shell of beauty, and faith means nothing to her except for a word which is like a blank canvas. It needs to be full and offering before she can ever even look at something so mindless. Later, he'll find out something that will shock him to the bone. She is an atheist – and always has been, ever since before she met him – but she likes the idea of belief. Even if she doesn't have it. Sasuke will tell him this, and he'll want to cry. She's a card carrying non-believer, and yet he'd believe. He'd do it forever if she wanted him to. Because she was more than God. Just as he turns to leave, she says something that shakes him to the very core.

"You made a God in me."

It's only then he turns and smashes his hand into a pot. She looks startled and bites her lip inwards. She would be stupid to think she could use such words. She didn't know faith, or reason, on anything even remotely akin to love and even so she had managed to steal his heart quite unlike anyone ever had.

"For you, there is no God!"

He can feel rage surging through his body, although he knows it to be pointless when around her. She's been able to tear his mind apart from the very first second he met her with what seemed like a basic form of ease, and maybe that was why she had ensnared him with little more than a passing whim. She has always been more than anyone. She has always dared to go a step further. She has wanted him.

"No, there isn't, because I believe in myself!"

She shot back loudly. He is momentarily shocked by her outburst, and feels the anger sliding away. He has never heard her scream. He had heard her whisper, smile, moan, anything but actually raise her voice and it is this which stuns him. This is the girl with touches like barbed wire; if you touch her it will always draw blood. But she has never exploded – she burns brighter than anythinganyonehim still though – and it shakes him. There is fire in her vagabond eyes, and he can't grin at getting what he wanted. She is showing she's no heartless nomad. But she's doing it in all the wrong ways, and when she falls to pieces again from trying so hard he knows he'll cry as he pulls her back together again. He wants to and he will. But perhaps not this time.

"What makes you is those who love you, and you don't believe in them."

Because this time, she didn't want saving. Even if the hurt in her reaction failed her. Her head snaps backwards sharply as though he has slapped her with this utter conviction in his words. She has never believed in people, for she has never needed to. She has always been behind her callousness and her harsh words, but he never entrusts that she has meant them until this moment when she is so furious he isn't quite sure what she is anymore unless she is something more disgusting than him.

"What would you know of love? Those who would turn their backs on us, leave us to suffer, who would gladly watch us come to harm. They are not those who love us, and they never have been. I do not need their companionship, and if that is the way you think I certainly do not need you!"

She doesn't want him. Not anymore. Her venom and pain say enough. She has forgotten what it is like to feel, but perhaps just now the feeling of something she tried to stow away is returning and this time when she hides it again there will be no returning it to where had supposed it belonged all along. She doesn't want a heart, not anymore, and it is with knowing this he turns his back on her once more.

"We both knew it, once. Or maybe I was wrong about you."

At this, he thinks she truly smiles. The beast she has retrieved from inside gives him the brightest, most beautiful smile he has ever seen and he thinks that this is the thing which will make this all just that little bit harder. It'll beg him to stay just that little bit longer, and tell her how she broke his heart. But now is not the time. She just wants to show him how wrong people can really be, and how she can make anyone – God damn fucking anyone even him – do just what she wants them to until they know she's more than they bargained for. She's not just a pretty face and soft touch. She's more. So much more, like God. Except God, he will always believe, can't exist with her being created. Nobody is cruel enough to give free will to such a thing like this girl.

"I never asked for your approval."

She says coldly. It's like she's putting her soul on display and waiting for him to rub his feet on it and break her spine, almost wanting someone to take a hammer to her hands and break every single finger so she can't hide her face any longer. She wants him to see that this time, she doesn't care. It's like he can have what's left of her, Sasuke can collect chunks of her to fill up his past if he really wants to one day, and somewhere in between all her pain she's expecting to throw herself back on her feet like it all means nothing. Not that anybody ever did. Not to her. Really.

"But you've always wanted it."

He says. Sometimes, people don't like to use the word goodbye. He's not one of the people who think it leaves a final, stale taste. He just doesn't find it fitting. He knows he can never leave her. But he can give her these words like a wrapped up gift, and in the future she might tear off the paper and see beneath everything. If he could see her then, he was certain she'd be biting back a laugh. Instead of turning around, he keeps on going and lets the door shut behind him. He doesn't want to see her. This isn't the last time he'll have the chance, so he has no reason to.

This is how to shed the skin of belief. This is losing faith and painting girl black.

He is Juugo.

He has never been afraid. He can't write but his somewhat friend told him once that in the kanji of the letters 'run' and 'fight' there is only one line of difference. This is why he never backs down. There is a fine line of change between courage and cowardice. He's wanted to change for a while now from being whatever he is, but he knows that can never be so he's given up on being something more because when he was young he wanted to be a doctor. Now he finds it ironic.

(Why would a medical student cure cancer when they could amputate hatred, hedoesn'tknow.)

And this is just his skin.

So it doesn't matter who he really is. He is just a single name, no title or lie or fake loyalty hidden in a word. Just himself. But he'll swear until the end of forever that he only felt like his fit into this flesh was when a woman trapped by expectations dragged her nails across his already aching chest where his heart should be with her that side of more than skinny body seeking comfort in whatever she wanted him to be.

He's not ever going to give her it though. Because she is just a wide circling mess of a girl who will always return to the start once more no matter how much he tries to provide an ultimatum, and he is just a boy who in-between the crease of skin on his fingers writes oh God it's love. But only as long as he can. Only forever.

She's burned under the bone with her touch and made sure she remained since day one, making sure he can't forget. Not once. And it only then; when he finds himself as blank and unknowing as her and as human looking as she ever was, that he likes to think she had to be the most lost person in the world to turn to someone born a monster.

He is Juugo, and he is a monster. But he isn't quite sure of himself anymore.

I directly avoided smuttiness. I am not sure if that was a good or bad move, but this is a T people. Not an M. Though I am not sure if it should be, I am thinking M rated works are rather more graphic. Things have kicked off now, but I am not sure whether to like this or not. I know some people will not, because ohemgee this pairing makes no sense. Oh well. For the fourth time, if you feel particularly inclined, drop me a note, because constructive criticism is given a good home and reviews are loved like nothing else. :)