Chapter Fourteen

She doesn't bother with going to sleep. By the time he is upstairs and everything has gone quiet, it's crowning dawn — no sun, but the sky is a dark blue rather than black — and she doesn't have anywhere to go. Work will begin in a few hours and Shikamaru, with his face like that, won't be able to leave the house for days. He'll stay upstairs until the cuts are healed and makeup can cover the rest. She has clean clothes down here in the laundry.

Temari, paused, mostly, since Shikamaru disappeared to the second floor, gives a deep sigh, as though one large breath can shake the entire world from her shoulders, and then goes to make coffee.

Still, even with the caffeine, even with the anxiety and the fury and the guilt, she finds herself drifting off on the couch. It's probably the ebb of danger the night had presented, the relief of his safety, and the confrontation of a supposed betrayal, but her body, despite everything else, can't rouse. She is hours late to work and only wakes up to the phone ringing when Haku tries her at home.

When she comes back, Shikamaru is downstairs. He is eating at the table with a textbook before him.

His face looks worse than this morning, and his health isn't visually helped by the fact that his hair is down and he is wearing pajamas.

Temari, stomach tight, walks up to the table. He hasn't turned to look at her. He hasn't acknowledged her presence at all. There is food on the stove, but nothing set aside otherwise.

"Are you—" she begins, but he cuts her off.

"I have an exam on Monday." He says, as though she were going to ask about the textbook. Or perhaps to explain that he has six days to heal enough that his wounds can be covered up sufficiently.

Temari swallows, looking down at him, looking at his forearm and the red lines near his wrist.

"Okay." She says, after a moment, and then she turns around, headed back into the kitchen to gather a bowl of food for herself.

She watches tv while she eats and they don't speak again for the rest of the night.

It like that the day after. And then day after that and the day after that.

It's easy, again, eventually, to fall into a routine. She'd assumed it'd be harder now — now that she knows him, now that she knows what else it can be like — but it's not. It's exactly how it was before, in the beginning:

an arrangement.

It's easy to forget, soon, what the sight of his stomach and the dark hair around his navel looks like. It's easy to forget what his hands feel like on her thighs. These aren't things that go away, of course; they are just no longer things she ought to be thinking about. They're things she was never meant to think on in the first place. It has always been very clear, right from the beginning.

They still speak. They still live together. They're still sincere. They're still married. She still tells him of anything interesting at work. He tells her, after the first time he goes back to Kazue Haishi's house since that night, when she mentioned something about her dead husband that was of interest. They discuss what to eat and what to buy and who will take the car. He tells her when Hinoto has left a message for her and she tells him what Hinoto says after they meet.

They don't enjoy the other's company, is all. That's what has shifted, nothing else. If anything, this is more natural. After all, they were never actually together. She's happy to not look for him when she wakes up, to be annoyed when he doesn't sleep instead of worried, to not let her eyes settle on the long lines of his form.

They're still together, in all the same ways they were and weren't before. They still work side by side. They're still partners.

It's like it was, like it was meant to be. He wants nothing to do with her and she can't stand him, but they make do, and time continues on.

Two days after Shikamaru finishes his last exam, he accompanies Kazue Haishi on a weekend getaway. Haishi has a work conference in Kumogakure. Shikamaru is joining some classmates for a weekend abroad, or so he's supposedly told his wife.

It's the first week in June and Temari is more than happy to see him leave.

"He's been so difficult to be around during finals," she tells Kahyo when she invites their neighbor out on Thursday night, the first of four nights she has without him. "It's embarrassing how excited I was when he said he wanted to go off with some friends and lament in the woods."

Kahyo's husband is gone too, as he so often is, and so they have dinner together at a restaurant that overlooks the beach nearest their neighborhood.

They discuss Shikamaru and his school, but they mostly talk about Kahyo's work and her husband.

He was married before, Temari finds out, and he left his wife for Kahyo. It's easy to see why, listening to the honey-like melody of her voice and watching the light of the sun kiss her cheeks as they overlook the ocean — after all, Kahyo is kind and smart and any person would be lucky to be by her side —, but it is also difficult for Temari to imagine someone as well-intended as Kahyo to ever come close to taking up with a married man.

"You must have been very much in love, to choose each other like that."

Kahyo tilts her head and looks over at Temari.

"Before you met Shikamaru, was there anybody else?"

Temari shrugs. "Minorly. Shikamaru was my first "real" boyfriend."

Kahyo pauses and looks at the evening sun, squinting her eyes at the glare still coming from it.

"Imagine if you stayed with them, the others, and then met Shikamaru after that. Wouldn't you do whatever it took to be with him?"

Temari snorts and looks back at the water, ignoring the reality of it. "He'd probably like to think so."

Kahyo laughs and they go back to discussing other things.

Friday is easy — she spends all day at work, as she always does, and then that night she hangs out with Ruka and one of Ruka's college roommates who is visiting from the Frost to help Ruka move. They go to Ruka's apartment, the one she is leaving next week, and sit on the balcony and drink lots of wine and spend the whole time telling ridiculous stories to the roommate about their work and the gossip of who is dating who and a retelling of the one (very) public break-up they witnessed by two people who work on the third-floor. They also talk about their friends and Temari learns about Ruka's shyness in college and the first time she went to a party. Temari also learns, which is the most valuable, that Ruka has been wanting to go to medical school her whole life and only fell in with the labs during an internship in college.

"Go," Temari says, noticing absently that the ends of her words are beginning to slur, "don't stay in something you don't like."

"I like the labs!" Ruka protests, smiling, and the college-roommate laughs. "I like working with you and with Haku and, well, you know."

"No, you don't," Temari shakes her head, only realizing it as true now that it is put in front of her. "Being a doctor is so much more interesting."

"Well — what about you? Why do you work there?"

She shrugs. "I am good at it." She says, which is in itself an honest comment. "And I always knew I wanted to work for the government." That's true. Kind of.

"Do you want to stay though? Move up?"

Temari shrugs again. No use saying more when she doesn't know what her assignment will be.

"It's good money. Okay money. And not too much work. And I care about it. So I'm happy, for now, at least, while Shikamaru is still in school."

Ruka laughs. "If we're being honest," she says, gesturing to the almost-empty bottle of wine in the middle of the table, "I can see Shikamaru staying home with kids and you staying the breadwinner."

Temari raises her brows and takes a long sip from her glass. "He'd probably like to think so too," she repeats as soon as she swallows. Then she clears her throat, returning her drink to the table and asking Ruka more about what medical school would entail.

On Saturday night, Temari is alone. She has some other friends she could call — Haku, of course, and a few more from work she doesn't really know but would say yes if she asked. She's already been with the student protestors she's working — she'd been in meetings with them all day, so it's not as though she is particularly lacking any social interaction. Plus, if she really wanted, she does know some of Shikamaru's classmates well enough to pursue their company outside of him, but she doesn't want to open the door to much discussion of him, so she decides against it. For all of them. She is too tired. She is too beat. She is too…. She doesn't know.

Also, while she has spent many hours home alone, she's never spent the night — an entire night — knowing she is alone.

Even if Shikamaru comes back when she is already asleep and she virtually has her run of the house when awake, there is a difference between being alone for hours and knowing you're alone all night.

She doesn't realize this at first and begins Saturday evening watching a movie on tv. But she soon gets bored and stops listening well. Eventually she misses a major plot point and decides to turn it off rather than try to piece it together as the story goes on. She isn't paying enough attention to try.

Plus, she feels like she is wasting her time by herself.

Next, she wanders into the kitchen and looks outside. It's not dark yet, so she sees no stars, but she looks at the same chunk of sky she always looks at. And a minute later, when she steps back, she finds something stuck on the counter and decides she should clean it off. Then she cleans more, and soon she is on the ground, scrubbing out minor scuffs and stains on the tile. She only stop when she cuts her knuckle rubbing out a stain.

After cleaning the kitchen, she finds a puzzle in the credenza that she'd bought once when she'd thought they needed to fill the empty drawers and shelves of the home. The puzzle, which she'd deposited almost a year ago and promptly forgot about, has been opened. Shikamaru must have done it and then put it away without her knowing.

It's dark by this time and she's forgotten to eat.

She stops in the kitchen and grabs an apple. And some ice cream. And she eats that.

And by the time she heads upstairs, it is long past her regular bedtime. She doesn't go to sleep though. That, too, feels like a waste.

She runs a bath and fills it with bubbles. She doesn't have to worry about Shikamaru walking in, which he sometimes does inadvertently when she forgets to lock it, and luxuriates in the warm, inviting heat of the soapy water. She watches the way the bubbles settle on her skin, on her chest, on her thighs, before eventually popping or just slowly drying into a light film atop her.

When she was much younger and living in one long room filled with hard-wired bunks and mattresses thin enough to fit between her fingers, she hadn't minded living with seventy other people. She grew used to it quickly.

But then, when she was twenty-one and no longer living in the academy, she took a month-long assignment living with three others in a cabin in the middle of nowhere through the dead of winter. And she was miserable. She hated it so much. They were working all hours — mostly through the night, with no regular sleep schedule — and then in the little time she had to herself, there was always someone there. Not to be entertained or even engaged with, but it was still different than living by herself.

Living with Shikamaru, in the beginning, was similar. She remembers thinking that. But over time, adapting to the presence of someone else, she'd forgotten how much she'd wanted to be alone when she was younger.

So this — this, sitting here, knowing she is completely alone, is nice. It's what she's always wanted, after all. Sure, she's in a house that is only vaguely her own and in a country she hates, with a name that isn't hers, but there are parts of it that emulate her own imagined-adulthood.

Temari pulls the drain and stands up once she gets too hot. She is sweating and her hair, which she'd kept up and out of the water, is wet now at the roots from her perspiration.

She steps out of the tub carefully, planting her feet on the mat and then reaching over, out of nothing but habit, for the towel on the hook, but she drops her arm before touching it.

Shikamaru isn't here. And he won't be. No one will.

Sure, he's seen her naked, she thinks. And if he came home now, it wouldn't matter, she'd just go get dressed.

Except he's not coming home.

Not for days.

It's a sort of freedom she hasn't had in so long, she hadn't even realized she'd been missing it.

She hasn't actually slept naked in months, which isn't something she always did, but it definitely wasn't unheard of. She hasn't, not once, slept in bed fully alone for just as long. He's always there. Someone else is always around.

For a few minutes, Temari deliberates on what to do with this liberty. She sits at the foot of the bed, completely nude against the bedspread, and stares at the dresser, letting the water dry off her naturally. There are two photographs up, one of two people who are meant to be Shikamaru's parents, the other, the wedding photograph Tenten and Neji took last winter.

Next, she goes downstairs, not quite dry yet, droplets of bathwater still clinging to the bottom of her calves, and makes herself a finger of whiskey like Shikamaru sometimes has.

No, disgusting.

She adds some ice.

Then she goes, still completely naked, though a little too cold now for comfort, back upstairs and into his office. She isn't sure what leads her there except that, normally, she is never allowed in. Vaguely. She's not actually banned from the room, of course (she'd never allow that), but Shikamaru is here, always, and the whole room smells of him, so usually she avoids it. She's only been in maybe two dozen times in the year she's lived in this house.

He doesn't clean much. It looks like there is no coherency to the organization. There are piles of paper everywhere, though nothing exactly scattered about either. Surely he has some system.

She starts over at the desk, where most of the papers are stacked. There is a supply of pens and a trashcan filled with balled-up paper. He has a chair, but in the few times she's come in, he's either asleep in it, or doing all his work on the floor.

Absently, with one hand holding her alcohol, Temari flips through the some of the loose-leaf, hoping to find anything of interest. She can feel goosebumps up her spine in the cool evening air and she can imagine how ridiculous the looks, but she is too lazy now to go put on clothes. And she wants to keep going through Shikamaru's things. She's hoping to find something new, perhaps something she doesn't know and would care to know.

There is nothing like that though, naturally. Nothing personal. Anything that he cared about wouldn't be here.

Not here, not in Kiri.

And if he, like her, ever wrote something down, like a name or a place that meant something to him, he'd have burnt it too. Just like her. Even his code books, indecipherable to anyone, are likewise indecipherable to her. There is nothing to learn of him here, even though this is the only place in this whole country that she might call his.

Everything in this room, all these papers and books before her, she knows about, even if she doesn't know them individually.

She was here when he built it.

Everything that is actually meaningful to him will never be in this home.

Temari takes another sip from her glass and grits her teeth at the burn of the swallow. She decides to take a look at his notes instead, finding a few notebooks that are clearly used in his classes.

He doesn't have many notes, and what he does take, he doesn't seem to write down very well, or, at least, not very legibly.

In one notebook, on more than one sheet, she finds notes exchanged with someone. A woman, by the writing. Little comments every few pages. Hellos; flirtations. Temari raises her brows. She wonders if he responds. He must, as the conversations continue. He is writing back on her paper then.

Does he find the connection with this woman useful? He hasn't turned her down, clearly. Does he make evident that he is married or does he think this flirtation will be of use in the future? Does she know of his wife and is still trying to pursue him? Perhaps he does seriously have a crush on this woman? That is always possible too. Temari doesn't know — she wouldn't be part of something like that.

His scrawl is tight and he presses his pens too heavily into the paper to keep the characters from blending into each other.

She turns her head one way and then the other, trying to make out the things he'd thought to jot down. She recognizes his writing, but when he is writing something down to be read by someone else, when he leaves a note at home, it's much easier and more legible.

It's reminiscent of when they first met; when she'd tried to piece together an entire man from a few pages of his book, though she supposes, really, she's never done anything differently. Everything she's tried to piece together of him, every scrap of comment or change of glance she's noted and considered, is all just contrivance. Conjecture. On her part. And, mostly, on his.

Still. She can't help it. It's all she'll have, really. So she wonders about the things he's chosen to write down in these notebooks. Obviously it's not much of the class — there is too little here considering the date on the first page was in his first week at the beginning of the school year.

What is he like in school? Is he well-liked? He gets good grades, and he's friendly with his classmates, sort of, but do professors like him? When he is with his peers, does he speak of her?

She feels, for the first time in a long time, even despite the past two and half weeks where they've been distanced and hardly speaking more than one sentence to each other, that she really doesn't know him at all. And she never will. How could she?

For a while there, she'd thought perhaps she did. Perhaps there was something she understood, something they shared.

But she understands now, looking at this part of his life that is separate from her, yet inextricably linked to their shared goal, that his school life is just as false as their marriage.

She doesn't stay much longer. She goes to bed long after midnight and wakes up mid-morning, buried deeply under the covers and covered in sweat despite never having put any clothes on.

They're probably still in bed. The Sunday portion of the conference starts later. They're gone for a weekend trip — if they aren't having sex at this moment, they're about to. They'll have room service or Shikamaru will run down for food like the over-eager student he is meant to be. Then they'll have sex and he'll be careful to make sure his mouth is sweet like orange juice and not bitter from coffee. He'll have bruises and hickeys and scratches all over his pale skin and he'll be interested in nothing but her and will be earnest and eager in a way only a twenty-year-old-can be.

Surely that's what he is doing while Temari goes running. While she weaves through streets, trying to get enough breath into her lungs, wiping sweat from her face, he is in a nice hotel in a foreign country enjoying blowjobs and breakfast in bed.

Sometimes it feels like she is a tightly capped bottle that someone keeps shaking. She can keep going and going and will be fine — she's always fine, isn't she? — but it's like she's always waiting, pushing and pushing, for someone to unscrew the cap just a bit. It's tighter when she is wholly under cover — like with the protestors — but even here, at her home, alone… even there, no one has actually opened the bottle up.

Perhaps this is what Hinoto meant. Perhaps, if she gets too close, someone will shake it too hard.

Or worse, maybe, someone will try to unscrew the top.

And today feels like that — like she is on the edge of something; like, if she smiles too much, one more time, she'll explode.

So she stays home again. She sits, alone, and does nothing. She thinks, in the end, nothing of it.

(though she worries, sometimes, if she's shaken too much, will she even notice?)

Her final night by herself, Temari doesn't do anything different or unusual. She doesn't strip off her clothes or distract herself by going out to dinner.

She eats leftovers and does some household chores and then by nine she is in bed reading, exactly how she will be tomorrow when he is home, exactly how she is almost every single night, and will be, for the rest of her life.

She wears she same set of pajamas she's worn all year except in the depths of winter when it was too cold to not be engulfed in clothing. She's brushed her teeth using their shared toothpaste and is reading the same periodical she was when he left. Perhaps he'll notice. Perhaps he won't. He doesn't look at her much these days and she certainly never engages in any sort of conversational camaraderie.

The telephone in the bedroom, kept over on Shikamaru's side, tempts her.

She could call him now. She could confirm his arrival time tomorrow and ask how he is.

Are you coming back? She could ask, even though she knows the answer (there's no option in it). I'm waiting, she could say. Would a wife say that?

Should she? She has never once called him when it was unnecessary. They never called simply to check in or to say hello, only to schedule, to ask questions whose answers couldn't wait. Though perhaps this is necessary — as his wife, shouldn't she call him? Is it unusual for husbands to disappear for a whole four days with no contact? Was this suspicious?

Who knows. Calling without his instruction to could ruin whatever else he has in place. Perhaps he said they've talked during the day, perhaps his excuse to his wife never included his staying in this hotel in the first place. It's not worth the risk when she has nothing to say.

She can imagine what would happen. She'd call the hotel, get connected to him, and he'd be kind on the phone with someone else there, but he'd be worried something was wrong. And when he realized she was calling for no real reason, he'd be annoyed.

She remembers a few weeks ago, sitting in the storage room, knees by her chest and spine pressed against the cement wall waiting by this exact phone desperate for it to ring, desperate to hear his voice.

Temari shakes her head, even though no one is there to see it. She decides against it. She shouldn't do it. Without anything else to do, she goes back to her magazine.

"So," she ventures, crossing her legs at the knee, letting her dress slip to reveal her thighs. "How was it?"

Shikamaru is looking for something in the fridge and when he straightens, he is holding eggs, butter, and some peppers.

"Good," he says absently. He's been home only an hour and has done nothing in that time except take an extended shower.

Temari, perched on the counter, shifts to look out the window for a moment, shoulders hunched up to her ears. Good? That's it?

"You didn't learn anything of interest?"

He pulls out a cutting board and washes the peppers. She turns her head to watch him.

"Nothing specific," he says as he moves, continuing to turn off the water and find a knife. "She had meetings Thursday and Saturday night after conference hours. They were late, after dinner, and couldn't have been far from the hotel because she was never gone too long. Took nothing with her."

"Any idea what they were about? Who they were with?"

Shikamaru shrugs, beginning to chop. "She's hiding something. They're not just reunions." He says, the stove between them. "But no idea how far along they are with whatever they're doing."

"And you?"

He keeps chopping but turns his head to look at her, eyes dark. "Nothing." He says, and then he looks back to the food. "Hinoto thinks I can work her."

Temari scoffs. "Work? They want you to turn her?" She shakes her head. "It'll never happen. You'll only get us in trouble. They'll always look at people close to her."

"We're not close, Temari." He turns on the stove and warms up the pan, melting the butter.

She rolls her eyes. "She's loyal. After her husband was killed, she would have had to dig her way out of the cloud. She's surely given a lot to be where she is."

Shikamaru shrugs. "Maybe it makes her bitter?" He stops and looks up, staring ahead at the vent above the stove, taking a long breath, jaw tight. After a moment he turns and levels Temari's gaze. "Anyone can turn, given time. They may not even know they're doing it."

Temari is the first to look away. She doesn't like the hard lines of his eyes, the set of his lips, the words out of his mouth.

"It'll be years." She says, sliding off the counter, turning away from him and adjusting her cardigan around her shoulders. She doesn't want to see him confirm it, to affirm it, again, but it's no matter, because he says it aloud anyway.

"Most things are."

a/n: thank you all so much for all the discussion (hate? 😂) last chapter. I love hearing from you. It makes me so happy to hear people enjoying it.
thank you above all to carol and emma for everything you do, least of all editing this.