a generous thank-you to carol and appy, and an extra HUGE debt of gratitude to emma for an absolutely amazing last-minute sub in. you are all completely fantastic.

Chapter Eight

Temari leans her elbows on the bar, digs her bone into the wood, and pulls the little spear in her drink against the rim so that the maraschino cherry stuck on it moves down the stick. Her drink is mostly full. It's only been ten minutes.

She sips at it, waits patiently for a minute, and then looks around. It's not too crowded. Enough people around to not make a statement, but not many coming in and out. She goes back to the spear, playing with the cherry, long black hair pulled over one shoulder to expose the line of her spine.

He has been here for about two minutes. He, too, is sitting back and looking around, from one of the tables facing the bar.

He's eyed her, twice now, but his eyes haven't stayed on her. One woman went to speak to him though, and he had declined the conversation.

So Temari looks up from her drink, looks over her shoulder and finds him again, like she has evaluated the others and is settling on him. He smirks. She smiles, invites, raises the spear carefully to her mouth and sucks off the cherry right between her lips.

It has always been easy. People have always been predictable.

"You're new," he notes, placing his jacket and wallet on the dresser. He takes off his watch. "I know all the girls here." He isn't very interested, which is ideal, and is only making conversation.

"I heard there was work." Temari stands by the bed, feeling much taller with the significant height of her heels. She watches him get ready and then, when he begins to come toward her, she steps forward as well, putting her hands on his chest and pressing, enough to be purposeful, but without any threat. She walks him carefully backwards until his knees hit the armchair and he tips back into it. "You're from the village?"

Minoichi huffs shortly, sitting down now, as she leans over and slides her hands off his shoulders to stand between his open thighs. She licks her lips, pouts them, and plays with one strap of her dress, but as he looks at her, he looks almost bored. She knows it's a good angle. Perhaps he just does this enough. Perhaps he has too many other interesting things in his life.

"No," he says, after a moment, but he doesn't say anything else.

"It doesn't seem like many people have lived in Curtain for a long time, I didn't know what work they were talking about until I saw you."

"There's work," he confirms. "You should bring friends."

He scoots up, reaching for her hips.

She hums at his touch, and then fully pulls her strap down and reaches up for the other one. There hasn't been anyone in the Silence for a long time. Not since the wars ended. She knows this.

Temari pulls down her dress, slowly, watching him watch her, fingers tight on the fabric, pulling it down over her breasts to sit at her waist, where his hands are resting. And then he moves, rubbing, down and around her butt, and then further down, around her, into her groin. No one has touched her there in a long time. He massages for only a moment and then he moves back up to her hips.

"Huh," he smirks. "You've got great tits."

Temari tilts her head, then takes his hands from her stomach up to cup her breasts, to feel her nipples. She knows how to do this.

She exhales, tilts her head back, and makes a noise. Once. Twice. She closes her eyes as he touches her.

And then, as if coming to a sudden realization, she opens her eyes wide and looks back down at him. "You fought in the war, didn't you?"

Minoichi laughs, louder now, and comes back as she leans forward, letting his hands fall from her.

"Wow," Temari breathes, lips wide in amazement. She lowers down to kneel between his knees. She touches his chest again. "You're so strong," and he is. "And young," she says, moving her hands over his chest, undoing the first few buttons of his collar. They're hard underneath her fingers. She's not as smooth as Shikamaru had been. She moves again, running her hands down, over his chest, his pecs, his stomach, his hips and his thighs, spreading them wide, and then coming up to press slightly to the side of the bulge in his pants. "I've never met anyone who fought." She says, just a breath. "No one in the city did anything. You must have been so brave!"

He huffs a laugh again, but it is lower now, his response gruffer. "They don't like to get their hands dirty. In the city." The conversation is over now. He is no longer interested in just talking. So she bends her head lower, scratches her nails down to his belt. He breathes through his mouth as he watches her undo it. He inhales as she opens the fly and gently pulls out his cock.

It's been a long time since she has done this, but, like they say… riding a bike.

"Suck," he says, only as her mouth is centimeters from his skin. "Get me harder."

Tentatively, she flicks her tongue out.

He grips the back of her head. "You'll need to work harder if you want me to fuck you."

His hold isn't forcing her down, so she looks up under her lashes and smiles. "I do," she almost whines. "I want you to, so bad," and then she opens her mouth and leans down and sucks in one long motion.

Temari has never been particularly good at this, but often even mediocrity is fine. She's always found, if you don't know any tricks or aren't inventive, men (and it's pretty rare she is sleeping with someone else) are more than happy to put you where they want you.

It hurts her jaw, tastes bitter on her tongue, and she hopes she won't have to blow him for too long. But it could be worse. It could always be much worse. Plus, not that it means anything or makes any difference, but she hadn't been lying earlier — he is handsome and only ten or so years older than her, which is definitely not the norm.

This whole step lasts longer than she wants it to, even as she raises off him with an exaggerated pop to ask what else she can do.

She goes faster when he asks, uses her hands more, feels his fingers in the hair of her wig, moving her hair aside to watch as she continues to go down on him, quick and short and only broken up by the occasional pause while she licks from the base of his penis up to the top, circling her tongue before continuing. And it's easy, eventually, to find a rhythm.

And then, suddenly, and with no warning, he leans forward to grab her shoulder and, without quite wholly shoving her away, he pushes her back and turns her around so she is on her knees on the hotel's carpet, and her dress is being shoved up and her underwear pulled down.

Just like that, he is inside her. And not gently.

It hurts; she's not ready, but she's fine. It's nothing noteworthy. Nothing too unusual, even. And, in the comfort of having her face hidden from view, buried in her forearms, she smiles with the ridiculousness of it, with the ease and predictability of the whole affair. Men who hire prostitutes, nine times out of ten, are only looking for one of two things from the sexual encounter: a pliable body to be handled as desired; or a person to direct and educate them. There are other reasons, sure, but it's usually one of the two, and while the latter is most conducive to her end-goal, the former is easier to have sex with.

Her black dress, at this point only a swath of tight fabric from her hips up to the bottom of her ribcage, is hiding her wound.

It makes her want to laugh, even as her whole body is moving, hips bruised by Minoichi's hands pulling her onto him over and over. Shikamaru had thought it best for her to try and keep her dress on. While Suna had apparently decided the scar on her stomach was minimal enough to allow her to do this, she and Shikamaru had thought it too risky, especially with someone like Minoichi, who would know what a scar from a bullet wound looks like.

Honestly, she hadn't thought she'd get away with it. People mostly want to see women's breasts, she knows, but even if that's often the most sought-out, it doesn't outweigh seeing someone naked in totality.

But hey — it worked out, even as she hides her smile, and, without touching her dress, she knows it is high enough on her stomach and back to cover the scar tissue. Minoichi reaches forward to pull her hair back while continuing to fuck her from behind.

She moans, makes a noise with each thrust, legs weak and shaky.

Somewhere, downstairs, in a familiar car down the block, Shikamaru sits, listening to everything she is doing.

She can imagine him, leaning back in the front seat, probably, elbow on the window and chin in his hand as he gazes out onto the black street, listening to the noises in this hotel room. She is sure he is judging her too. She's lived with him a good amount of time now, but she's never known this side of him, never heard anything like this coming from him.

She wonders what he thinks when he hears her.

She can imagine, coming downstairs and getting a play-by-play of everything she's done wrong, of everything she should have asked. Or maybe, more likely, he'll ignore her, and simply create a list of things she should have done differently in his head and then not share it with her. Yes, she thinks, as she whines and moans and exhales, that's what he's going to do: judge her, think of better strategies, and then never say anything.

"That was good," Temari begins, perched on the edge of the bed. "Maybe I should stay in town?"

There is a pause. Minoichi isn't looking at her, but is standing over by the window, overlooking the single main street of Curtain Village, buttoning up his shirt.

It's only ten thirty.

Temari slips on one shoe and then the other.

"They told me there was work," she tries again, "but you were the only interesting one downstairs. I don't know if there are enough men to interest my friends."

Minoichi turns around. "I've already paid you," he says shortly, finishing his last buttons. "No need to keep complimenting me." Finished with his shirt, he tucks it back into his pants. Then, with a sigh, he steps forward. "There are men here," he says, as if musing on it. "And more coming. There will be enough."

Temari laughs without humor, short now too, if he is going to be.

She opens her compact and reapplies her bright red lipstick. Her lips, in the mirror, are swollen.

"Government paychecks aren't worth too much though."

"Hm." He walks closer, reaches for her hair and tilts her head so she'll look up at him. She does, lowering her lipstick. He's strong. Bigger than Shikamaru. "Come back," he says. He stares at her and then shakes his head. "You have no idea, do you? Ha. No one does." He huffs and lets her go, but stays where he is, hips tipped forward to her. "They pay lots," he says, "when they want to keep shit hidden."

Temari caps her lipstick and closes her compact, shoving them back in her bag. "Hidden?" She asks, as if not paying much attention at all.

"You think people come to the Silence?" He laughs. "Place is a shit-hole. Those assholes always hire people like us to do their dirty jobs."

Temari bites her lip as she looks back up at him, knowing how she'll look even if it does get lipstick on her teeth. She muses on it.

"Okay. I'll bring my friends."

"Bring all of them," he orders. "By the new year, this place will be a goddamn goldmine for you girls."

Temari stands off the bed, close to him. Yes, she thinks, as he looks over her body one more time, too easy.

When the elevator doors open, Temari isn't unhappy. She isn't happy either, but she is glad to have the information she has, glad it was so simple to get, and glad that it is a one-time thing with Minoichi and she is only minutes from being comfortably on her way out of here.

But all of that —the moment she is twenty steps out of the elevator, her too-high-heels clicking on the tiled floor of the hotel lobby — is gone when she sees Shikamaru from the corner of her eye talking to the front desk. It's a nicer hotel, the nicest in the country, surely, and as she walks, she sees the clerk gesture to her.

And so, with good feelings gone, Temari makes her way back to the hotel bar instead of out the front door as she was hoping.

It's already enough, she thinks, that it'll take them hours to drive to the border and get into a motel for the night so she can properly shower, and even then, with the ferry and the further driving, it won't be until tomorrow afternoon that she even gets home. Shikamaru is meant to be waiting in the car, ready to speed out of here, but here he is.

Temari takes a different seat in the middle of the bar, looking as if she was going back to work. She orders a glass of water, once more sweeping her long dark hair over her shoulder to expose the skin of her back where her dress dips significantly. Her eyes are dry. She wants to take out her contacts.

After another minute, she clocks Shikamaru come in, and then obviously, purposefully seen by at least the bartender and one of the other women around, he takes off his wedding ring and shoves it into his coat pocket.

She sips at her water through a straw and goes back to looking down at her glass as he takes a seat toward the end of the bar. He is looking around, looking unsure, evaluating the options, and then, without ordering a drink, he slides off his stool and comes to sit beside her.

"Is this seat free?"

Temari looks over her shoulder at him, eyes moving to take in his whole form. His coat is thrown over his arm, his hair pulled back. He is sweating. His lips are dry.

She bats her lashes. "Are you new in town?"

He swallows, stares at her as though he's never seen anything like her. He seems uncomfortable, his hand in a fist by his side, slightly shaking. "I'm here for a conference." He is mad though, beneath this. Mad, probably, that he has to be here, doing this, in the first place and not just waiting for her arrival in the car.

Temari hums and swivels around to face him head-on, legs crossed at the knee and positioned to run her foot along the inside of his calf.

"You've never done this before, have you?"

He inhales, jumps a little when her foot touches him. "No— I, uh…."

It's endearing, and works, vaguely, because he seems so young, and if she were a prostitute, she'd probably like to go with him. But she thinks he'd do better to play it suave. He's so good-looking, she'd be surprised to have someone like him so unexperienced with women. Or maybe she is only thinking that now that she has seen him act stronger, more powerful, than he appears on the outset. Maybe it's because, beneath this, she can still feel his annoyance, even as he acts otherwise.

"Is it that obvious? Can I buy you a drink?"

Temari smiles and cuts to the chase. "My rate is three hundred an hour, but it goes up if you want anything weird."

Shikamaru, taken aback, gives her a look, amused. It's outside of who he is supposed to be in this moment, and she finds herself smirking, waiting for his answer.

"Weird?"

Temari tilts her head. "You know," she says, lowering her voice, "I'll do whatever you want, you can do whatever you want to me, as long as you pay. I am very reasonable."

Shikamaru huffs and looks away.

"Reasonable." He parrots. "Fine." He looks back at her. "In my car."

"Don't you have a room?"

"Does that cost more? In a car?"

"It's more dangerous."

"I'll pay more."

Temari pouts and bats her eyes. "It's too cold." They're speaking low, as one would in this situation, but just loud enough to be heard by the tender and the two guests closest to them, if any of them were to listen.

He slips off the stool. "I'm parked outside. Take my coat."

She complains more, but follows suit, taking the long coat he is extending to her and wrapping it around herself.

They walk to the entrance and he takes her arm when they step outside. It's windy out now and it will probably snow later tonight. Her legs, bare beneath his coat, are icicles, and Shikamaru, in only a sweater, looks pale. But the car is only one block down.

There are multiple cars parked outside with men waiting inside, and she'd seen some bodies lingering around the lobby.

"They showed up about half an hour ago," he whispers when the car is in sight.

"Does that mean Gengo is here? I thought he was out of town?"

Shikamaru pulls her closer with his elbow. "Doubt it's for your guy." He's not demure now. His irritation is all out in the open. She can tell, even in the dark of night and the wind biting at her cheeks. She doesn't know why, but it angers her too. It's just a job, she wants to say, as they come around the car and Shikamaru unlocks her door.

Remember, she says to herself, Shikamaru is too.

But she doesn't know why she'd say it. She isn't too sure what she means by it. So, she stays silent.

He doesn't speak either, and there is a rough tension when they slide into their seats. They haven't fought intently for some time now, not in a way where anger is clearly directed at the other and not to a minor action. She is used to the feeling though, of being angry with him.

If Gengo was here, she shouldn't have come. She should have waited. She should have gotten more information.

After he hooks in and turns on the heat, Shikamaru looks out and then reaches over, fingers at the back of her head, and with a strong arm, pulls her lower, whispering at her to get down.

Temari stiffens and, halfway down, refuses to budge any further.

She is livid. Her blood is pounding.

Beside her, Shikamaru's cheeks are red from the cold, his lips parted as he glances around, looking outside to the street, keeping his eyes from her.

Temari swallows. She looks down at his lap, at his groin and his thighs. "Sorry," she says, tasting the bitterness on her tongue, "are you wanting me to blow you too?" He must have sat right here, listening to that. She knows she is being cruel, even as she says it. "Did that turn you on?"

"What — fuck!" Shikamaru snaps his head over to her, incredulous. But she sees, for one moment too many, his eyes look down to her mouth. "No." He says, hard, angry with her now and not just the situation, which in turn only makes her feelings stronger. "They're all watching you."

The security around the hotel, outside it, is watching her. They will be. This is why he was buying her service in the hotel in the first place.

Shikamaru, exasperated, lets go of her head, but she doesn't move back, still half-inclined toward him.

"Can't you be nice?" He breathes, incensed. "For once?"

Temari inhales. "I can be real nice."

She doesn't know why she says it. She doesn't know what she wants. She just wants to hurt him, somehow, for some reason that she can't quite articulate. She is furious.

He doesn't rise to the bait though. He just exhales, slow, eyes boring into hers. But then he blinks and pulls his gaze away, despite his anger toward her, and turns the key in the ignition.

Temari, knowing he is right (which always makes it worse), does lean all the way down and holds herself, inches from his lap, until he touches her shoulder to push her off, apparently far enough away now.

She moves immediately, taking off his coat and then straightening to fall against the back of her seat. He drives a mile west, outside of town, and then stops to change out the license plates. Temari takes off her disguise then, puts the colored-contacts away and wipes off her lipstick and puts on pants instead. After that, once they're both more settled in, they spend the rest of the drive in silence, her words too provoking for them to even discuss the work or what exactly she had gleaned from Minoichi.

There is a bell above the doorway as they walk in to announce their arrival, but Hinoto is already looking at them — had surely seen them coming — and there is no one else in sight.

They walk into the dingy ticket-stand/limited-diner and slide into the booth across from Hinoto without taking off their coats. It's too cold to do much else. Shikamaru leaves the one suitcase they have by the foot of his seat.

They haven't spoken at all since last night except for minor logistics, like how it used to be when they first came to this country.

Hinoto has already ordered two coffees and they're still steaming when she and Shikamaru sit down. Their ferry had arrived on time and everything seems good and on schedule.

"Welcome back," Hinoto begins with, reaching for a napkin where she has spilled some of her coffee.

She is dressed well, hair pulled back with a barrette and wearing her red pearl earrings as though it isn't seven am on a Sunday morning on a tiny island with only two towns in the middle of December. It's not even light out yet, the sun just beginning to crest over the horizon. Shikamaru and Temari, on the other hand, in their pants and sweatshirts and bulky coats, with windswept hair and numb cheeks, certainly fit in more in this empty diner, with its two tables and no waiter in sight.

"Gengo returned," Shikamaru says first. "In the middle of the night."

Hinoto pauses in wiping down the table. "Yesterday?"

"We shouldn't have gone in so quickly," Shikamaru continues, voice low, irritation clear, "if he was going to be there."

Hinoto sighs and folds the dirty, wet napkin, and puts it aside.

"I agree," she says. She blinks. "Did you see him?"

"No." Shikamaru leans back. He hasn't touched his coffee. He didn't take any at the port the ferry left from this morning either. "Just security. Everywhere. At least twenty people inside and outside the hotel. They arrived around ten."

She nods. "Okay. He was there then."

There is a beat. Shikamaru, apparently satisfied, says nothing else.

Temari glances at him and then leans forward, wrapping her hands tight around the steaming mug. She'd kept her hands in her pockets in the short walk from the boat into the building, but they're still freezing and the heat from the coffee shocks them. It burns, but she keeps her hands there.

"You were right on Minoichi. He confirmed everything. They're coming before the new year."

"Who?"

Temari shrugs. "Men like him. Soldiers. 'Dirty work,' he said." She rests her elbows on the table. "Kiri wants to keep it hidden. I didn't get a number, but it's more men than you're thinking. I'd guess at least a hundred."

"Good," Hinoto nods, thinking it over. Then she raises her eyes to meet Temari's head on. "Good work," she says, sincere, "for your first real run."

Temari frowns. "It was—"

"Easy for you," Hinoto cuts her off. "I know. Just take the compliment. Did any of the men see you?"

"Yes."

"Nothing to be concerned about." Shikamaru adds. He reaches out to finger his mug at the handle, twisting it to turn towards him. The logo on his mug, different from the other two, is a fishing market. Probably a local one. "We handled it. They were looking at her. Didn't even see me." They were unprofessional, he means. Body guards, goons; not agents. "We're fine."

Hinoto nods again, but doesn't say anything more about it. When she gets up to leave, she leaves her keys on the table for them.

"Stay," she says. "Finish the coffee." And then, after slipping on her coat, she looks down at them. "Order something to eat too. You look tired." She pats Shikamaru's shoulder as she walks out.

Last night, at the motel, she'd slept well, even in the new environment and with the weight of their fight hanging between them. But tonight, back in her own bed in her own home, she can't sleep. She knows Shikamaru is awake and it is keeping her up. These days, he seemed to sleep. Or, at least, he seemed to sleep more (which is still less than she does) and is gone in the middle of the night, in the office or downstairs, she doesn't know, only once or twice a week.

Tonight though, he is rolling around again, shifting on the mattress, facing the wall.

It's too dark to see much, but she can almost see the outline of his form, the expanse of his back, though his black shirt and black hair blend into the darkness. Still, she can sort of make out the white skin of his neck and the white of the blanket, which is down by his waist, even though it's cold enough, even inside the house, for her to burrow underneath the comforter.

Finally, after what feels like hours, though it is realistically probably only eleven (half an hour since she went to sleep — she doesn't want to rise and look at the clock on Shikamaru's bedside table though, as it will upset her if it's too late), Shikamaru fully rolls over to face her. He must know she is awake, even though she has not moved and has done nothing all this time except watch him, because he reaches out to settle his hand on where her wrist, up near her face, rests on the mattress.

He rarely touches her, especially in bed, and even more rarely does he actually touch her skin. But he holds his fingers at her wrist, as though absently, and then pulls away a minute later.

Her heart, now, is pounding.

"I was fifteen," he says, quietly, voice gruff, into the darkness, "the first time I went out like that."

Temari swallows. Frowns. She can't see his eyes in the dark, but she knows he is looking at her, and it takes her a moment to figure out what he is talking about.

"Why are you telling me this? I don't need to hear it."

"I want to." He rolls onto his back to look up at the ceiling. "I was a virgin, which is why I was sent. He liked young boys with no experience."

She sighs. She is used to stories like that. It really isn't anything. It's something she has done for years and will continue to do for years after this. It's as easy as killing someone: it's not something she forgets, but it's something she can do without thinking about, without hesitancy.

"It felt good," Shikamaru admits, low, "when he was killed afterward." She'd thought he was done. She wonders how much he wants to say, how far he wants to go. They never talk about this, they never talk about before. But she knows he does it when he wants to comfort her, like when she was shot. She doesn't need to be comforted now though.

Maybe he does.

"I didn't do it, my friend did." Shikamaru continues. "But I was glad, when he died. Not for society or anything, but because I wanted him to suffer. I've never wanted that for anyone before or since. Just him."

Temari stays silent. She was younger than he was. Things were always worse, always, in Suna. But it's not a competition. She is sure he'd killed people by fifteen too. It was the way things went, the way they go, for people like them.

"They sent me to a counselor of course, after. But it never mattered. And they never send you again, do they?" He exhales, long and low. "It's the job."

She stares at him, only vaguely seeing the outline of his face in the dark. "The job." Temari echoes.

It's another long time, long, slow minutes, during which she almost falls asleep, before he speaks again.

"I've never done it with anyone else."

This, too, takes her a while to figure out.

She asks it quietly, carefully. "Never not for work?"

"No." He holds his breath and stares at the ceiling. "I don't know if I'd know how."

Temari exhales. She thinks about how he knows where to touch her, about how, in public, he knows what intimacy looks like. And how he's never learned that, but been told what it is.

She thinks about that time she put her hand on his knee, back when they first met, back during their honeymoon. She remembers (she thinks about, sometimes) how he said I'm not ready. It hurts to think about. When they do have sex, eventually, it too will be for work. He will never touch anyone like that, never desire someone like that: on his own. Never.

And that hurts.

As much as he annoys her, as much as she wishes she were sleeping beside someone else, she does care for him. He is, she knows, a good man. He is a good man and he deserves to have had some happiness, something real, love, before this. And now he never will. Not unless he meets someone, which she supposes could happen. He could never leave her, but he could have an affair. He could fall in love. And now, as she lays in bed watching, she finds herself hoping that he will. She hopes he will fall in love, one day, even if she can't quite bring herself to say it.

"It's different," she whispers instead, "when you want it." Temari swallows, mouth dry, and then rolls onto her back as well. "Sometimes you do want it, even when it's for work, of course. When you're attracted to someone. Maybe when it's with someone you genuinely like, even if it's a mark. I mean — you know, I'm sure. But when it isn't… when it really isn't…." She imagines sex, remembers real sex. She imagines that desire. Imagines love. "It's different." She rolls back to look at him. "I'm sorry," Temari finishes, sincere, "that you won't feel that."

Shikamaru continues to stare at the ceiling. He may not even be blinking. She wishes she could do something more. She wishes she hadn't been so mean earlier, after he picked her up in the bar.

"Me too," he says, and that's all he says on the matter.

Shikamaru has a lot of work over the break. His part time job at the paper, which is usually only four or so hours a week of copy-editing and the occasional student op-ed, has picked up as he's taken on more in the time off from school. He's gone most of the month.

Temari's labs only close for a week, so she continues on there, even as the main campus shuts down and life around the city slows. She takes the bus, mostly, and for the first time since she'd arrived, it's often almost completely empty. The streets, cold, with curbs piled high with sleet and plowed snow, are no longer bustling in the usual pre-nine am shuffle.

It snows a lot, much more than most winters, apparently. There is a storm all over the south. At one point, there are a full six days, some of them falling during her official week off and some not, that neither of them are able to leave the house.

Things fall into an easy routine. They have friends over once, and go out with people twice together and more on their own, but apart from that, they stay home.

Temari spends the time studying, bettering her work so she that can understand the more nuanced areas of physics her resume boasts about and keeping up with new theories so that she can ask for more when work picks up again. Shikamaru, when he is home, writes more and spends more time in the office (she genuinely doesn't know most of what he does, so he tries to show her something about codebreaking once. He works on "books," he says, which isn't about cracking individual communications, but the books used to generate the codes. It takes years, really, and he can't do much as he isn't on a team. These are old books, apparently, and are not of ready use now (of course not, they have teams of people whose sole job is to decode these things back home), but he has the time and interest in working on these things that are generally on the back-burner, primed for people like him who are hobbyists and, as he says, good linguists (cunning linguist? she asks; that's low, he says, unamused, even for you), and he has a talent for sitting there for hours and hounding things out. To her, his work ends up being much more boring, theoretical, and tenuous than she expected), so they don't spend too much time actually together.

With all the time off, it's easy to miss home. When she has work, both at the labs and for Suna, she spends most of her time concerned about the day-to-day, about maintaining her cover; things like that. But when she has all this time, time to sit and ruminate and not engage in easy distractions, she finds herself slipping into more and more memories of her life and her childhood. Sometimes, it feels like it is all over for everyone. As though, when she left, life back there simply… ended. For everyone. But of course that's not true. Her whole city, her country, is moving on without her. The smells and voices and touches she knows are all still happening. If she could go there right now, she would know exactly what to expect, would know exactly what she would see, who she would be with.

It doesn't snow in Suna much. It happens each year, but it's not prevalent. And when it does, it's mostly some flurries whipping past in the wind. The snow never really sticks for long and is almost always gone by afternoon. Not like here.

She knows it snows in Konohagakure. It snows a lot there. The storm that hit them here, keeping them indoors for almost a week, also hit the Fire. It's on the news, pictures of Shikamaru's city and country. She knows, as they sit on the couch and watch it, his elbows on his knees, eyes staring at the tv, that he is thinking of his friends and his family and picturing his life before and thinking about what it looks like in that many feet of snow. He is thinking about his home and the people he knows and the streets he was raised on. She knows, because she is thinking about this, her home, too.

She can imagine Suna well enough. She knows how the street is cleared every morning, even in light snow, and the food that is cooked during the season, and the smell of wood burning in fire places (she also knows the voices of hungry people and limited winter food rations and the frailty of bodies underneath heavy coats). It's not like that here, not at all. Temari shovels snow from their own driveway, they don't have a fireplace, but use central heating, and here, people have lots of food, and everyone is always cooking it and bringing it and offering it, and making so much and then throwing so much away.

She and Shikamaru talk about this sometimes, but not much. By now, they've discovered so much of Kiri's otherness in comparison to their own sense of normalcy and morality, that there isn't much more for them to discover. Not much more to be surprised at.

"We're stronger," she says, once, legs crossed beneath her on one end of the couch. Shikamaru, who is already looking at her, doesn't move. "We're tougher. Our people care for one end, one goal, more than they do here."

Shikamaru watches her for a while, on the opposite end of the cushions, his legs spread long between them, bent slightly to not touch hers with his socked toes, his eyes hard and unblinking. Then he agrees. "Yes. It made us stronger." But he doesn't say much more. She wonders what he has seen, she wonders what Kiri brings up for him.

All in all, time passes slowly. They are each caught in their own routine, and as no communication comes from Hinoto, they spend their time as regular young adults: biding this season in complacency until something more happens.

He stares for a while. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't gasp or frown or anything like that. He just stares, taking in the board before him, evaluating it, as though not sure what he is seeing.

Temari keeps looking between him and the gift, tilting her head as she is shoulder to shoulder with him and he is taller. When she'd brought him into the kitchen, she'd been expecting a different reaction.

He swallows, eventually, before he speaks. "They don't play here," he says, hard.

Temari frowns and steps away from him, arms crossed at her chest.

"Not like you do, no. But I asked around. Some people do. And most people know of it. It's a growing interest." She huffs and looks at him until he gives her something more. "You don't have to be worried about it, if that's the problem?"

Shikamaru finally looks over at her. "You knew I played?"

She shrugs. "I figured. I have met you, you know." He smiles at that, and that makes her happy; that is what she wants. "It's slow," she continues, "very little physical exertion, and it is only worth as much mental work as you're choosing to put into it at any given time. It's very flexible like that."

She hadn't actually known he knew how to play the game. She had just guessed.

But it's clear now, from the spark in his gaze and the weight in his breath, that he is well versed. And maybe he had craved it more than she could have possibly expected.

They didn't exchange gifts at any other holiday, their birthdays went largely unmentioned, and it is only on occasion that one even purchases something for the other without request. She knows that this is the time to give things though, even if only material, and so she figures this — a game she'd thought about a few months ago in passing and then realized he probably really liked — is an easy solution.

"Do you play?" Shikamaru has moved away from her and is at the table now, fingers on the board, touching the pieces.

"I know how." Temari leans her hip against the counter. "You'll be fine," she encourages. "You can teach your friends."

"I can teach you."

Temari huffs. "I told you, I know how to play."

He turns over his shoulder to look at her, brows raised. "Hm." And then he turns back to the game.

He means that, even if she knows how to play, she doesn't know how to beat him. She probably should have seen this coming. She should avoid doing anything that might stroke his ego.

"Sure," she shakes her head, turning away to head back to the tv show she'd been watching. "We'll see."

"How is it?" She asks at the end of their conversation. "With him?"

Temari instinctively opens her mouth to say okay, but then stops. It's not as clear cut as it was the last time Hinoto asked.

Things are okay… they're not great — not by any means — but they are certainly better than they were. She doesn't dislike his company. Sometimes, she even wants it. She no longer looks for ways to be mad at him, no longer finds herself dreading his appearance. Sometimes, she even finds herself looking at him like — she… she just finds herself looking at him.

She cares for him more than she used to, maybe… generally.

It's mid-afternoon and Temari is at the history museum. She's looking at a display in the corner and Hinoto is a few feet away looking at another one. Nobody else is around. They're in a hall about pottery. She is hungry, but it's too late for lunch. She needs a snack.

Hinoto walks past Temari to view something on her other side, waiting for the answer.

Temari looks at the display before her, but doesn't really register anything she is seeing.

How is it?

She doesn't know.

She thinks about Shikamaru. She thinks about how, a little while ago, when she got shot (the worst) and he told her that story of his mother. It was nothing. It was one mention that was only about him and actually described nothing of his actual childhood. Some blasé facts with no informative details, and yet, Temari has built an entire narrative around it. She imagines his mother plays shogi, or maybe his dead father, and one of them taught Shikamaru. Maybe he hasn't touched a set since his father died. Or maybe he was in love with a girl who liked to play. Temari knows nothing. She knows he had friends — even though he prefers being alone, he does seem to understand how to get along with others in a social setting in a way she doesn't naturally know — and she thinks he grew up with some money in the way he views their bank accounts. But really, it's all conjectural. She really knows nothing about him from before. She paints these stories from the scarce snippets she hears, and then tries to make sense of how they all add up to the man she lives with today.

They're not good though, the two of them. He doesn't say much to annoy her anymore, but what he does say, when it does strike a nerve, strikes a hard one. They see the world too differently. When it comes down to it, even though she has slept in the same bed as him for months, he is still a stranger. She still doesn't know what is real, even though she likes to think she does.

Last time she told Hinoto he was soft. He still is, she thinks. He's too soft. He wants peace and disarmament. He hasn't said this (he never would), but he does. She can tell. He's cynical and critical and often wants nothing more than to be left alone. He is not often happy, and when he is, he never grins or anything; even his laughs, when loud and genuine, are never without a hint of sarcasm. But deep down, he wants more. She can tell this too.

He is purely optimistic and wants things to work out in the world. He wants to be happy, and he wants to return home and be back with his mother and his friends and wants to find a wife of his own that he really loves. He likes to lay down and feel the sunshine on his face. He likes dedication and he likes loyalty.

Shikamaru will do the job, she thinks. He'll honor his commitments and will live or die following orders. He's cut out for it. She just doesn't think he should be doing it. It's not what he wants. Not like her.

"He does well." She says, finally, to Hinoto. "But he is soft."

Temari imagines if he were here right now, standing beside her before some ancient clay-pots with indiscernible patterns, what he would say to this question about how things are. His hand would be hovering beside hers, his turtleneck high up to his ears, the smell of his soap clear if she tries to find it.

"He only touches me when he has to," she finishes. "He keeps a clear separation between the cover and his life."

She turns her head. Hinoto is still looking at the display, eyes on the paragraph of text describing the scene as though she is reading it. But she is frowning at Temari's comment. Hinoto rarely frowns. Hinoto rarely even emotes.

She doesn't know what Temari is saying. Neither does Temari.

"This is an assignment," Hinoto says.

"Yes," Temari answers. He always completes his assignments very well (even if reluctantly). And this, all this, is only just an assignment.

a/n: i know that was rough! thank you all so much for bearing with me.

we're now (finally!) halfway!