Intermission 37
- a love story in bits and pieces -
One time, one date, she agrees.
It turns out horribly.
It is a proper date, proper in the sense that neither smelled of sweat or kunai polish, and there is abundant food and music and wine...the whole shebang.
A proper date, during which an obsessive-compulsive Kushina can't stop going to the bathroom (to re-recite Mikoto's compilation of top 10 date mistakes) and a frantically-clueless Minato smells far too strongly of honeysuckle flowers (new cologne, spritzed on liberally by Jiraiya).
They decide not to speak of it again.
So when Minato is called on an urgent mission the day after to investigate something in the nation of Rouran, neither of them is especially morose over the separation, and gladly welcome the buffer period.
Before he leaves, Minato can't bring himself to set a date for after his return. After his performance on the first, and her rather severe reaction to the prospect of fine dining (the owner that kicked them out after Kushina slammed the restroom door a bit too hard), he knows he can't just put someone so precious through the same ordeal a second time. A sense of clinging pride, but more so, abject desperation, tells him he'd rather be friends than awkward, failed lovers.
Kushina can't bring herself to pick up the pieces and try again, either. She's (okay, she'll admit it) scared shitless. Some things just aren't meant to be, 'ttebane. If 'dating' is this bad without him knowing about her… condition, how bad would it be down the line?
Neither remembers how to be vulnerable
And both have this weird feeling in the pit of the stomach, a gnawing worry... that this is as far as it will go.