Chapter 7
What hurts the soul,
My soul adores.
- W.B. Yeats
It is mid-August. The rains have only occasionally let up sufficiently to be called a drizzle, but otherwise continued steadily. In the quaint little hamlet of Kurashiki, there is water everywhere, and there are waterlilies everywhere.
Ino refuses to even glance at them.
Sonkei and the other farmers in the vicinity are worried about their crops, which have yellowed and are threatening to rot in their harrows after so many sunless weeks. Sonkei's pond has swollen well past its borders, and he mentions to Ino one night that he lost some calves to it, and one of his dogs, too, that tried to herd them to safety.
Ino feels awful. Why does she feel like it's her fault? For fuck's sake, she has no bearing on the weather.
As for Hidan, he spends inordinate amounts of time praying. And, now that he is well enough to roam, he also disappears from Ino's apartment frequently. Ino suspects that he may be praying for, and looking for, his missing arm himself. He often returns to her apartment soaked and stinking of swamp-muck, but then again, it's hard to go anywhere these days and not get soaked and filthy…
In the back of her mind, she suspects that his search is entirely futile, and that there is only one with the dubious blessing of being able to find his pieces and put him back together. But that line of thought is quashed as soon as it begins.
Ino misses the sun dearly, misses normalcy dearly, and if it wasn't for her promise to her parents and to Kiku to stay until September, she would be out of here tomorrow.
She sighs as she leans against a window-pane in Kiku's shop and watches the heavy grey sky pour out its relentless burden of rain. Business is not great right now – with this flooding, people have things on their minds other than flowers. Her shift at the store has been an utter waste of time: it is 7:00 p.m. and she served a grand total of one customer today, and it was Sonkei, buying her one of her own flower arrangements, just because he is stupidly sweet like that. (They have a quickie in the bathroom, because no-one is going to interrupt anyway. It is the highlight of her day.)
At 7:30 p.m., Ino puts up the closed sign, locks up, and stomps to her apartment in a rather bad mood.
"Bitch ahoy," says Hidan when she slams the door shut behind her and all but drops her flowers to the floor.
He also doesn't look like he's in the best mood. Ino brushes past him without saying anything, because she doesn't feel like dealing with him right now.
It might be just her imagination, but she thinks he smells like blood.
He sits in the dark living room as she undresses. Ino suspects that he may have just done one of his rituals. She doesn't ask about it, because she really, really doesn't want to know.
He stares at her through the bedroom door as she steps out of her work clothes and into shorts and a tank top. He's seen her do it a dozen times before, this post-work routine, but tonight he is intense and broody. She can practically feel his eyes on her, a violet, violating touch along her breasts, her thighs, her ass.
She approaches the couch to sit next to him, but something about him is unsettling her at the moment; that perhaps-imagined whiff of blood, that intensity in his stare. She makes a detour to the kitchen instead under the pretext of making something to drink.
"Tea?" she asks, in an effort to normalize this weird tension.
"No," he says, in a voice that sounds much more hoarse than usual.
He perturbs her further by following her into the kitchen and standing far too close to her as she plugs in the kettle. Ino turns to tell him to get the hell out of her personal space, but then she catches his gaze. That makes her hold her tongue; he kind of has crazy eyes right now.
He definitely smells like blood; the thick scent of it lingers on his skin. And if he smells like blood, then he did his Jashinist ritual sacrifice thing. That would explain why, in this moment, his eyes are almost luminous – he is still high on it, high on the intensity of his communion with his god.
And Ino doesn't really know how to deal with him like this. She is used to whiny Hidan, bitchy Hidan, playful Hidan. Not crazed, fevered, I-just-killed-someone-and-I-liked-it Hidan. This one, with his religious mania alight in his eyes, kind of scares her.
Ino squeezes past him to fetch the flower arrangement that she left by the door; it gives her a pretext to remove herself from his immediate vicinity. She sets the vase on the kitchen table and tweaks at the placement of the flowers a little, to pass the time between now and the kettle whistling.
It is uncomfortable in here – tense, and Ino is apprehensive. Her instincts are never wrong, so she knows that she has reason to be on edge right now.
Hidan stares at her with an unnerving fixation as she pretends to fix the flowers at a safe distance from him, on the other side of the kitchen table.
"Who are those from?" asks Hidan.
"I think you already know the answer," says Ino.
"You saw him today."
"Yeah."
"Did you fuck him?"
Ino looks up. "Remind me why that's any of your damn business?"
The kettle whistles. Hidan unplugs it with a vicious tug and makes his way towards her.
They are chest to chest now. Ino does not understand what is happening, but she doesn't like it. Hidan smells like blood and death. She turns her head away from him.
He takes her chin and turns her face towards him, forcefully. "So you did fuck him. Why does he get to fuck you, and I'm only allowed to watch, if I'm lucky?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Which word didn't you understand, angel-slut?"
Normally, this comment would piss Ino right the fuck off and warrant a slap upside the head. But right now, Hidan is verging on the crazy, the dangerous kind, and Ino doesn't quite dare.
She pulls her chin out of his grasp. "What is wrong with you? He's my boyfriend. You aren't. You're a priest with – I thought – some kind of vow of chastity. Of course he gets to fuck me, and you don't."
"See, that's what I don't get," says Hidan, in a low, rough voice, like he's screamed too much recently and almost lost his voice. "I don't get why Jashin's little whore of an angel fucks some random farmer, when I'm his most goddamn faithful servant. Shouldn't he be rewarding me or something?"
"My thing with the farmer isn't about Jashin," says Ino.
"Everything is about Jashin," says Hidan, fervor making his gaze hot.
"No, it's not. Get a grip on yourself," says Ino, pushing him away with a palm against his chest.
Hidan looks down at where her hand presses into his sternum. He holds his hand over hers and presses it into his flesh even harder. "How did you know I stuck it right there? You're good, angel-slut."
"What are you talking about?"
"I killed for Jashin today – it's been too long – it was fuckin' incredible," says Hidan, looking at the ceiling as he presses her hand even harder into his breastbone. His eyes turn heavenwards in the memory of his murder-bliss and Ino feels his pulse race crazily under her fingertips.
He looks down at her and continues breathlessly. "And then, when I was at my highest, and I could feel Jashin, like a fucking supernova going off in my brain, do you know what he showed me?"
Ino stares at him with wide eyes and shakes her head mutely.
He drops her hand. A finger and a thumb press into her jaw and tilt her face up towards his. Their eyes lock, and Ino is afraid.
"He showed me your face. What does that even fucking mean?"
Ino stares at him wordlessly, because she truly has no answer.
"Why did Jashin send you to me, and make you so fucking beautiful, and make me want you, when I'm not supposed to?"
"You don't want me. You can't possibly, because you know that anything other than slaughter is a sin," says Ino, repeating, from some distant memory, one of his morbid dictums.
"Slaughter," repeats Hidan. "Like those little deaths, yeah?"
Ino tries to turn away again, but he doesn't let her. Fingers press bruises into her jaw. They exchange breaths and the smell of blood makes Ino's stomach roil.
"I'm talking to you, angel-bitch. You wanna slaughter me a bit? You wanna show me some of those little deaths?"
He's confused, he's high under the influence of Jashin, he's crazy. Ino doesn't like it one bit. She grabs his wrist and breaks his grip on her chin with difficulty.
"No, I don't. Back off, Hidan."
She shoves him away. He takes an easy step back and then he is in her space again, resisting her pushes effortlessly. She feels his muscles under her palms, taut and ready, and she remembers that he is a shinobi as well as a priest. And he is stronger than she is, much stronger, even if he is missing an arm. Their skirmish is brief; she finds both of her wrists caught in his single hand and pulled painfully behind her.
"Shh, angel-girl," he says, breathing into her ear, stilling her with his body pressed hard against hers.
"You need to let go of me," says Ino.
"Do you love him? Farmer-boy?"
"No," answers Ino with a vehemence borne by honesty. "He's a summer fling."
"Who do you love?"
She looks up and sees those fanatical eyes, and she knows what the right answer is at this particular moment.
"Jashin," says Ino.
"That's right," says Hidan, breathing heat onto her neck. "And everything we do is for him. Everything…"
He seems to be on the verge of some kind of breakdown or breakthrough, Ino isn't sure which, and she sure as hell doesn't want to find out. "Yes. You're right. Why don't you sit and calm down, and we'll talk…"
"No, I don't think so," says Hidan, pressing himself in even closer. "I kinda like how this feels…"
He doesn't know what he's doing, he doesn't understand what he's feeling, because this religion of his has taken his normal functions of arousal and excitement and made them into a religious manifestation, something he chases for a high. He is so, so confused, and it is so, so dangerous right now.
"Hidan," says Ino, trying to use a language that he will understand in his current state. "This is sinning."
"Is it?" breathes Hidan. "Feels so good, though. And you're his fuckin' angel… feels like being close to him, when I pray…"
He trails off and she feels his shaky breath on her cheek; he is breathing her in like she's a wisp of sacred incense or smoke from an altar candle. He reveres her, but he also wants her, and Ino has some serious doubts as to his capacity to handle these two compulsions…
"What are you doing?" says Ino when she feels his lips brush the side of her neck.
"I don't know," breathes Hidan, "but I – fuck, I like it."
She tries to break away and he stills her, forcibly. Then he makes the mistake of looking down at her and allowing her full eye contact – and Ino has had just about enough of being manhandled by a lunatic monk.
She activates her mind-body switch, fully, for the first time since she's met Hidan. Her body slumps against the counter and then she is in his head, smashing through the barriers of his will and taking full control of him.
She fills him with the fury of her celestial wrath.
How dare you.
Her voice in his head is amplified to a hundred times its usual volume. It reverberates through him, carrying with it the explosion of her anger. She feels one of his sinuses burst into a nosebleed from the force of it.
Have you completely taken leave of your senses?
Is this how you worship Jashin?
She feels his spirit – fighting her, struggling – hesitate briefly.
How could you? I'm the one who made you whole again.
He isn't physically capable of responding to her, since she is possessing him, but when the echoes die down, she feels the beginnings of fear, regret, guilt.
I should blow your brains from the inside out for what you did tonight.
I think I told you to sit your ass on the couch and calm the fuck down.
She begins to move him. Hidan pushes back against her surprisingly hard, and the battle of wills that ensues is long and draining for the both of them – but this is Ino's specialty, and her determination and experience win out, and she presses him into submission enough to make him move.
Ino makes him lay her limp body gently on the kitchen floor. She feels something as he looks down at her unconscious body – a turmoil of veneration, adoration, and want, so dense, complicated, and contradictory, that she can almost understand his actions, though she cannot excuse them.
Hidan's hands shake through the combined strain of her unyielding willpower and his own resistance. She makes him stand, then take slow strides all the way to the couch, where she sits his ass down.
His muscles are flexed with his continued defiance, but Ino's grip on him is iron. She makes him stare at his reflection in the black rain-washed windows and holds him there until his blood calms and his muscles start to relax because they have no other choice; he is just about drained.
You're going to sit here until I give you permission to move.
Ino feels his acquiescence ripple by and decides that that is good enough, because she is exhausted too, and she would rather keep herself a reserve of strength if he ends up not cooperating.
But he will cooperate. Wafting around her now are the slow currents of his faith, and regret, and self-loathing. And the crazy in the background. Always the crazy.
Ino pulls out of his head and she is not gentle about it. She hears him swear as she regains her own body and gets back to her feet. When she looks over to him, she sees that he has his face in his hand and that he has grown pale; in fact, he looks ready to puke. That would be the sickening plunge of nausea that accompanies her departure from more… challenging hosts. She feels the beginnings of a headache from the strain of the experience, herself.
He does not move, so Ino resumes making her interrupted tea, hoping that the familiar activity will buy her some time to gather her thoughts. It doesn't really work; there are a lot of thoughts to gather and they are all over the damn place.
So she seizes her courage with both hands – as well as two steaming mugs, and some tissues for his nosebleed – and makes her way to the sofa.
He still has his face in his palm and doesn't look at her.
"Nausea, or shame?" asks Ino, seating herself next to him, to show him that she isn't scared of him, though she still kind of is.
He takes a shaky breath. Blood runs down his nose, past his mouth and to his chin. "…Fuck off."
Ino offers him the tissues. He takes them and manages to stem his nosebleed and clean up the worst of it.
"The tea will help with the nausea," says Ino. "Can't help you with the shame."
Hidan raises his head enough to see the mug that Ino has placed on the coffee table in front of him. His eyes follow the play of the steam.
"You're fucking giving me tea right now?"
"Yes," says Ino.
"You're too damn forgiving," says Hidan.
"It's poisoned," says Ino sweetly.
This takes him by surprise; he looks at her, then cracks an unexpected grin and takes a number of generous gulps of the scalding tea. Of course, they both know it isn't poisoned, and even if it was, it wouldn't kill him anyway.
He puts the mug back onto the table. Then they sit in awkward silence for a while, sipping occasionally at their tea, for lack of other things to do. Ino understands after a few minutes that the onus will be on her to address the elephant in the room, because he sure as hell isn't going to do it. In fact, if she leaves it too long, he'll probably disappear to pray or something, and they really, really need to clear the air here…
"So…" says Ino, "can we talk about what just happened?"
Hidan runs a finger along the bridge of his nose and sighs a long, shuddery sigh. Ino is patient as he gathers his thoughts, it gives her time to press a two-fingered massage into each of her achy temples.
"Something's wrong with me," says Hidan into his hand.
"Mm," agrees Ino. "Several things, I think."
Hidan turns to her with a clenched jaw. "Thanks for the input. Helpful as shit."
Ino shrugs; she was just being honest.
He runs his fingers through his silvery hair. "This is all your fault."
"My fault?" repeats Ino. "How is this my fault?"
"You need to stop showing up in the middle of my goddamn ritual, for one. That threw me for a fuckin' loop."
"I didn't do that," says Ino. "I swear on Jashin's – whatever's important – his ballsack."
"Yeah, right," says Hidan. "It's probably another of your angel powers. Like making it rain forever."
Ino sputters. "Excuse me? So now the rain is my fault, too?"
"Duh. I see the way you look at it with your angel-stare. You're causing it, that's obvious."
He does not know how close to being right he is. So, of course, Ino shakes her head. "I've never heard anything so ridiculous in my life."
"Really."
He stares at her. She crosses her arms and looks away from him.
"Let me tell you something, kittentits," says Hidan. "Angels are shitty liars."
"Whatever," says Ino. "We're supposed to be talking about you, not me."
"Can I just fucking point out that you're the one causing the issues, here?"
"Um, no," flares Ino. "These are all your issues–"
He opens his mouth to interrupt her, but she holds up her hand. "No. They are. Okay? You're unstable, mentally. You're incomplete, physically. You're obsessed with your god to the point of fanaticism, but you haven't been communing with him properly, so you haven't been having your – deathgasms, or whatever they are – I don't really get it… and you're horny because of that, I think, and you're not allowed to be horny, so you're hopelessly conflicted and even more unbalanced than usual. There. Those are your issues."
"Wow. Nice summary," says Hidan sardonically. "Since you understand everything so fucking clearly, how about you explain why Jashin is showing me your face in the middle of my quote-unquote deathgasms?"
"I don't know," says Ino.
There is only sincerity in her face, because she truly doesn't know. He turns away, sighs, and musses up his hair with an anxious hand.
"It's weird. He's never shown me shit before except the glories of slaughter. Why your beautiful fucking face?"
He stares at her, then, as though staring at her beautiful fucking face in the shadows of the living room will give him the answer. Ino stares back mutely, unable to offer him any enlightenment.
"What am I supposed to do?" he asks. "What does it mean?"
"I don't know. Maybe he showed me to you as a reminder," says Ino. "That I'm still here to help you…"
This suggestion is emitted with a small amount of guilt; after all, Ino has been deliberately avoiding helping him find his arm, because she is sick of being used against her will by Jashin in his machinations and she is trying to prove that he doesn't control her, or, even better, that he doesn't exist… and Jashin is drowning the village in retaliation, maybe, or maybe it's all a huge cosmic coincidence, hell if she knows anymore…
"A reminder?" repeats Hidan. "Like I need a reminder. I see you every goddamn day, I sleep with you every goddamn night. My every goddamn movement in this body is thanks to you finding my pieces and putting me back together… like I'd ever fucking forget that…"
"Okay, okay," says Ino, raising a hand in a gesture of conciliation. "It was just a suggestion…"
"There's another thing," says Hidan, and he looks decidedly angry. "You're right. I am fucking horny. What the hell is up with that?"
Because Ino is one of the most stunningly beautiful women he has ever seen, and on top of that, he thinks she's an angel, and he totally has a worshippy crush on her, that's why. But perhaps now is not the time for her to point that out.
"Since I found Jashin I've never once been distracted, or tempted… and there have been hundreds of women." He gives her a look. "Why did he send you to me? I mean, look at you. Why not some fuckin' uggo?"
So he knows that she is stunningly beautiful, and she doesn't need to point it out.
"Maybe it's a test," says Ino.
"Don't be stupid. Jashin doesn't do tests. You either satisfy him, or you die trying."
"Alright, fine. An exercise in resisting worldly temptations, or something?"
"Why would I want to resist…?" says Hidan, shaking his head. "You're his angel, you do his work, everything you do is for him and his plan, so isn't it – not wrong, to want to be near you, and… fuck, I'm so confused…"
"I don't know," says Ino, rubbing tiredly at her eyelids. "Ugh – these theological debates are way over my pay grade. And they're giving me a headache. And I already have a headache."
Hidan stares at the floor like a lost thing.
"I'm out of theories," says Ino eventually. "But let's have no more molestation in the kitchen. Okay?"
"I need to kill more people," says Hidan. "That'll solve everything."
"Wow," says Ino sarcastically. "What a fantastic plan."
"I know, right?" says Hidan.
Ino opens her mouth to point out his obliviousness, but, just now, with a huge migraine coming on, it doesn't seem worth the struggle.
She presses her fingers into her temples. "I'm going to go to bed. Don't kill anyone in the meantime."
"…Sure."
He is also a shitty liar.
"Hidan."
"Okay, I won't. Fuck…"
VVV